Blood in the Streets
by SlimJames
Summary: Roxas has been out of the game for a while, betrayed by the people he thought were his friends. But a latenight phone call and a mysterious death are pulling him right back in. He's walked away before...will he be able to say the same thing this time?
1. Chapter 1

"…_Cartwheel of Scratches…"_

**Roxas**

'_BBBRRRRIINNNG… BRRRRIIIINNNNG…'_

The sound of a cell phone; it's the pathetically generic sounding bell that came programmed into every one of the talk-boxes. My cell phone is going off. Upon having my sleep disturbed, my eyes crack open and look at the digital clock sitting on my chest of drawers. The little red numbers read 3:14 am.

It was annoying, but I rolled over and flipped open the phone before whoever was calling me got kicked into the voicemail. I hate having my sleep interrupted, but I was curious who would want to get in contact with _me_ of all people.

"Hello."

I croak the question out warily. I rarely get calls from anyone besides my mom these days, and I know that there was no way that mom would be calling me at three in the morning; she's scored an extra shift down at the Factory, and those slave drivers don't give their workers a moment's peace. At first, on the other end of the line, all I can hear is labored breathing; you know the kind. It's the type that you got when you just finished running a mile or just finished smashing some impressively energetic twat.

It was creepy.

"If you don't say something quick, then I'm hanging up," I snap; patience is a virtue that I've always struggled with. But seriously; who calls somebody at 3 am just to breathe into the receiver?

Just as I'm about to turn the damn thing off and retreat back into blissful oblivion, I get a response from the other end of the line. Whoever this is says my name.

"Roxas…"

The voice is raw and strained; it barely sounds human. And yet...it's oddly familiar as well; gives me that whole feeling of déjà vu.

"Pence?"

This is a surprise.

"Hey, hey Roxas! Long time no see, eh."

"Kind of hard to see somebody over the phone Pence."

"Y-yeah; still, it's good you remember me man. Been a long time, huh? Long time…"

He sounds really funny to me. His breath is labored and he's swallowing down mouthfuls of air like he can't get anything into his lungs.

"That really you Pence," I ask.

It's hard for me to believe that the voice coming out of the receiver really belongs to my old friend. Pence's voice is supposed to be robust and steady and filled with humor. That's how I remember him; he's the jolly fat kid. But this character that's speaking to me from the other end of the can and string doesn't sound like that. This voice is overwrought and it shakes like a dogwood tree in the wind at every other word.

"What's up man, why are you calling me," I ask around a yawn. It's a fight to keep my eyelids open.

"Roxas… Roxas do you remember when we were kids, y'know, back in primary school? You remember right; me and you and Hayner and Ollette and we were all together? I know that you remember, right?"

"Dude, slow down," I said. He's speaking way too quickly for my half-asleep brain to follow correctly.

But he just keeps on talking- rolling along as if I hadn't spoken at all.

"You remember that one day when we were kids," he rambled.

"When we threw those water balloons at Seifer and his gang out at the Terrace; it was right before school started back up. You filled yours with piss instead of water and gave it to me; Rai caught me and kicked my ass."

He forces out a hollow chuckle before resuming his story.

"I was all bruised and everything and you guys ran away and didn't stop running. But you know what? None of that threw a shadow over the day at all cause we were able to get back at them for breaking Ollette's Big Wheel and you and Hayner bought me ice cream afterwards. You remember that, right Roxas?"

I sigh, somewhat annoyed. "No Pence, I don't."

And it's true; I really don't remember it. I don't doubt that we probably did something like that back in the day, when all of us were still tight, but those days are long gone. Why bring up the past when we're not even friends anymore? This whole conversation is starting to creep me out.

"Look, if you've got nothin' important to say then I'm hanging up."

Pence sounds like he's hyperventilating on the other end of the line; his breath is coming in sharp, rapid inhalations.

"I'm into something way bigger than me man," he says. "I-I don't know if I'm going to make it through this one."

"Wait, what are you talking about," I croak, only half-aware of what's being said to me. "You in some kind of trouble?"

"Yeah…I-I mean I don't know. Maybe. You don't understand man, there's so much going on right now; the cookers, the expansion; everything's just so messed up and I don't know what to do about it."

I really can't figure out what he's going on about; he sounds like he's stoned. He starts to say something else, or at least I think that he was about to say something else; I flip my phone closed before he can get his next words out. Whatever that guy is into, whoever it was that he managed to piss off, it doesn't matter. It's got absolutely nothing to do with me.

Making sure that I turn the talk box all the way off this time, I place it back in it's spot on my windowsill before rolling myself up in my covers and snuggling my face into my down pillow. I try not to think about how incredibly weird that whole phone call was...I fail.

Epically.

I dig my face out of my pillow and stare up towards the dark ceiling. All of this is just too weird; why would Pence be calling me? We used to be close; we ran with the same crew, but that hasn't been for a long time. He had cut me out of his life the same as everybody else had and he decides to ring me up now? Plus, what was with the guy babbling about stuff that happened in the distant past like it still mattered to anyone? Maybe I should hit the redial...call back...have an actual conversation and get some real answers.

I kick the covers off of my body and reach for my phone; flip it open, turn it on. I search for the number under** Calls Received** and press the button. It rings and rings and rings until finally I hear Pence's voice at the other end...

'..._Hey, you've reached Pence, leave your message at the tone_...'

It's not Pence the man, it's Pence the voice recording.

A yawn climbs it's way out of my throat as my eyelids- no longer able to sustain the their heavy burdens- drift closed. It really is too late to be thinking about these things. Anyway, its not like I didn't try.

* * *

><p>The sound of my mom beating my bedroom door down always manages to pull me out of even the deepest coma-like slumbers. Today is no exception. After rolling out of bed and rubbing the crumbs out of my eyes, she informs me that I have exactly five minutes to get downstairs and grab my share of breakfast before she wrapped everything up and added it to her lunch.<p>

Good old mom; she's been using that same threat to motivate me to get up in the morning since kindergarten. Thankfully, it's gotten me into the habit of showering and laying out my clothes a night in advance; when my mom makes a threat, she means it.

In four minutes flat I pull on my school uniform- white shirt with the khaki pants, maroon blazer, matching tie, and plain black shoes with the hard soles- before running downstairs. Not surprisingly, my mom is already on her way out the door; her next shift at the Factory starts in around twenty minutes.

"Damnit, another minute and I would have had somethin' extra for lunch," she says in what I'm pretty sure is mock frustration. Everything is so straightforward with mom; it can be kinda hard to tell when she's joking.

"You would deny the most important meal of the day to your one and only begotten son? Shame and utter moral decay," I snipe back blandly.

She comes over and ruffles my hair- dirty blonde, so much unlike her ebony tresses- before giving me a peck on the cheek and hurrying out the door to catch her bus. She throws a "goodbye Sleutel" over her shoulder as she disappears through the screen door.

Sleutel is my first name….. I really, really _hate_ my first name. Mom is the only one who calls me… _that word_; I've spent a good portion of my my life making sure that people only know me by my surname- Roxas.

I quickly demolish the breakfast that mom had prepared for me and run back up to my room, grab my book bag, keys and goggles before running back down to downstairs and out to the shed in my backyard. I open the door of the rickety old wooden structure and pull out my pride and joy; a genuine 1968 Vespa Rally 180.

As I wheel the motor scooter out of its lockup, I allow myself a small sigh of contentment. When I had found her she was in a state of decay almost as advanced as the shed that she was now kept in. But now…

Well it runs reliably, that's the important thing. I think I did a pretty good job of restoring the vehicle considering that when I started, I didn't know a damn thing about motor vehicles of any kind. But hey, I needed a hobby.

Relocking the shed, I settle myself on the seat and whip my key- and by key, I mean screwdriver- out of my blazer pocket and start the little machine's ignition. As I speed down the road, Twilight Town's blocks and blocks of dilapidated and depressing homes and buildings sweep past me. The bombed out carcasses which were once respectable family homes were in the process of disgorging their working class residents out to their various places of employment.

Twilight Town is located smack dab in the middle of heartbreak. Every country's got an region like this, I expect. Gray, dreary; a place where there used to be industry. It's a place where armies roam the streets and can turn a cold October night as hot as midday July. It's a place where we used to build things; it can be a place of heartache and grief where dreams go to die. It's one of those places that get the "average sized" label slapped on them. Too small to be the big city, too big to cut it as a town.

My town is one of those places that the national news sources likes to say is dying. I can't say that I disagree.

I check my watch as I pull up to a stoplight; 7:58 am. It looks like I'm going to be early for school today. When the light turns green I pull out and turn the corner; that's when I see it, and feel my stomach drop. "It" was an ambulance- not an uncommon sight in this part of town- sitting in front of a house; _Pence's_ house.

I swerve my Vespa over to the side of the road and hopped off. It occurs to me that I might just be worrying over nothing. It's been nearly two years since I've said more than a few sentences to the guy. Pence could have moved.

There's already a small crowd of neighbors and interested passerby gathered in front of the house watching. The crushers are already out in force, maintaining a perimeter of blue bodies and yellow tape. I push past some yokel that's gawking at the scene and my insides twist into knots. I see Pence; he's laid out on his back, lifeless and stiff, in the middle of his yard. A pair of half-lidded dim brown eyes stares up into the overcast sky. The side of his face that I can see is purple and knotted up.

Up on the stoop to his front door, I spy a pair of detectives talking to his folks; the distraught look on their faces turns my stomach and I turn away.

I back away from the scene, the crowd, and run back out into the street. I grip my hair in between my hands as I gasp for air; it's suddenly become unbearably hard to breathe. I wonder why this is affecting me so much; he and I hadn't been close for a long time. Was it because of our shared history, nostalgia for days long gone?

Or was it that I might have been the last person to speak with him before he died…

"What the hell. What the hell," I mutter to myself. When he called me, he was trying to tell me something; he sounded scared. But scared of what? And if he was scared, why would he call me.

"You sonofabitch!"

I turn around just in time to see two more people I haven't seen for a long time stalking towards me. Hayner is walking in front. Behind him is Ollette; their eyes are red and puffy.

Before I can rightly react, Hayner grabs me by my collar and jacks me up against a telephone pole. The fact that I let that slide tells me just how shocked I'm feeling right now; under normal circumstances, I'd never let anybody put hands to me like that.

"You've got a lotta nerve showing up here Roxas," he grinds out.

Hayner is hurt and furious and grief-stricken. I just feel overwhelmed; I'm confused by this whole situation. Pence is dead- he looks like he died rough- and now my former best friend is looking at me like he wants to beat me to death with his bare hands.

"Wh-what are you talking about? What's happened to Pence," I manage to stammer out. I have to know what happened.

I feel Hayner tighten his grip on my collar and he brings his face closer to mine, so that we're almost nose to nose. Our blue eyes meet and all I can see in his are rage and sadness.

"He's dead! He's gone and it's your fault!"

My confusion and sadness suddenly turns into anger. I put my hands to Hayner's chest and push him off of me; who the hell does he think he is, blaming me for this! Before last night, I hadn't said a word to Pence in God knows how long and now he…

"Where the hell do you get off blaming me for this, I don't even know what's going on here," I shout angrily.

"Because you deserve some blame," Hayner shouts back vehemently.

Ollette runs to his side and places a placating hand on his shoulder, trying to get the hot blooded blonde to calm down. She looks back over her shoulder towards the house; we're making a scene and a few people have noticed. The crushers don't seem to have caught on just yet but if we keep shouting at each other like this, they will.

"Hayner, please! Roxas wasn't even there, he doesn't even hang out with us anymore; he can't have known!"

Hayner just shakes her off.

"You're wrong! This bastard might not have personally put the pipe to his lips, but he might as well have!"

'_Pipe,'_ I thought, '_Why was he talking about a pipe? Unless…_'

What I was thinking must have registered on my face, because Hayner's furious expression now contained a tinge of bitter triumph.

"That's right you bastard. Pence died because of HEARTLESS!"


	2. Chapter 2

"… _around the way they call me Lucifer…"_

**Roxas**

I can't remember how I even got to school; it was like one second I was standing in front of Pence's house and Hayner had me by the neck, and then the next, I was standing outside the cold, iron gates of my school.

Honestly, I have no idea how I traveled that quarter mile; teleportation? That might explain why I didn't get run over by a car or something on the way here, because I definitely wasn't paying attention to the world outside of the little bubble that has sprung up around me. All that I could think about-that I can think about- are Ollette and Hayner. Her crying; him telling me that it was my fault that Pence was dead.

And then there's me, not knowing what Hayner was talking about but still getting the feeling that he's somehow right and I am partly to blame for this, though I don't know how. He kept alluding to stuff; throwing around names and talking about some of my past…associations; making it sound like I'm the one set things in motion. Like whatever it was that Pence was involved with sits on my head.

Like I'm still one of the players.

I shake my head violently, running my fingers through my dirty blonde spikes, trying to snap myself out of this frame of mind. I cannot allow myself to think this way! It's not my fault that Pence was stupid. He should have never messed with something as dangerous as HEARTLESS and he never should have gone anywhere near the guys who sold it.

I mean, he wasn't a kid! He was practically an adult; he should have known what that junk does to you. He should have known that there would be consequences…

I'm getting angrier and angrier by the second. Angry at Hayner for putting the idea in my head that Pence dying a junkie's death was somehow my fault. Angry at Pence for being a dumb, weak-willed bastard; for trying HEARTLESS and pissing somebody off enough to get ganked. Angry at Olette for crying those stupid tears and looking so sad and making me feel...

All of my cold logic and rationalizations suddenly catch in my throat; my stomach begins doing flip-flops. Oh…oh no. Nonononononono!

I rush up to one of the trashcans sitting outside the front gates of the school and stick my head inside just in time for me to puke up everything I had for breakfast this morning.

'_Huurrghggh!'_

After around a minute or so, I pull my head from over the mouth of the trashcan, wiping my mouth with my sleeve. I notice a small group of people at the main gate staring at me- they're punks. Nothing but small fry saps; they're not Nobodies but they are giving me _the look._

I regain my presence of mind and remember where exactly it is that I am; the guilt and sadness and confusion that afflicted me barely three seconds ago get pushed to the back of my mind as the danger senses kick in.

I move aggressively toward the little knot of students, a look of pure murder in my eyes. A peon wants to try to get his name up by taking me on he's going to need to be prepared to bleed.

"Got a problem," I growl at them.

I reach into my pocket and grab my screwdriver just in case these boys are feeling adventurous this morning. My bluff works. The little clique back off; a few of them sort of shrug their shoulders and looks indifferent. One of the braver ones even laughs at me, playing the whole thing off.

I know empty bravado when I see it; they don't want it. Not here and not now and not with me. I keep my grip on my screwdriver and don't let go until I see all of them pass through the gates and walk across the courtyard towards a mob of twenty or thirty other people.

In their midst I find two very familiar faces holding court; a tall boy with vibrant red hair standing next to a short girl with hair antennas who-despite being practically a midget- somehow seems to tower over everyone surrounding her.

'_Friggin Nobodies._'

The tension in my body doesn't ease up. I can never ease up; I'm at school.

Lunch; my favorite subject, hands down. It's wedged right in the sweet spot between Maths and English. I grab my bag lunch and beat my feet towards my usual lunch spot, namely, the loading dock at the back of the school. I don't mix with the general population

My school's official name is the Twilight Town Preparatory Academy. The handle makes the joint sound like it's got class and prestige; too bad it's got none of the former and the wrong kind of the latter.

Our main claims to fame are the student body's abysmally low test scores, frequent incidences of assault, vandalism, arson and other very bad things. The situation here finally got so crazy that two years ago the provincial government stepped in and took over administration of the school to try and stop the madness and bring order.

I grin wryly to myself; there always been an "order" of a sorts in this school, though those slapheads in the capital would probably burst a hemorrhoid if they knew about the stuff that _really_ went on here. There was a whole other side to TTPA, an underground society with its own mores, folkways and economy. That's the problem with old people; they always underestimate the young.

Not to brag, but I'm a big part of the reason why things are as they are at Twilight Town Preparatory Academy. Before I can stop myself, I'm reminiscing about the past. I get to thinking about the school, which leads me into thinking about the Organization, which leads me into thinking HEARTLESS which- predictably- leads me back to…

"Pence."

I say the word softly, reverently; abrasively. That name becomes a prayer and a curse in my mouth at the same time. For what has to be the dozenth time since this morning, I think about him and how absurd the idea is that he's dead. I'm still having a hard time wrapping my brain around that one.

I hate feeling this way with guilt creeping up my spine and making my chest feel like it's filled up with cotton balls. Hayner's words keep playing back in my mind over and over again.

'_Is it really my fault?'_

I want to ignore it all. I want to be as apathetic and cynical and jaded as I was yesterday and I'm finding out- to my shock and disgust- that I can't. I'm one hell of a liar but I've never been able to be anything but honest to myself. I know, deep down, I _know_ that Hayner is right on the money.

'_Brrrrriiinnnnngggg_'

The bell; lunch is over. I finish off my food and throw my trash away. Everything that my mom makes is delicious.

Why do I feel sick all over again?

* * *

><p>2:27 pm.<p>

It's funny, but I never notice how long a second is until I'm counting them as they tick down on the clock on the library wall. When I was back in primary school I hated the library with a passion, mostly because I hated books. Currently, I consider it a sanctuary of sorts; nobody is going to try anything while you're under the watchful eye of old Mrs. Robin, the librarian.

Nobody who's interested in getting away with it anyway…

School doesn't end until 3:25 but I've decided to cut last period.

I should just go home. I don't want to stay around here; after all, it's pretty risky for me to be hanging around on school grounds by myself. At the same time, however, I really don't feel up to hopping on my Vespa and leaving, because going home would mean having to pass by Pence's house again.

I'm really not up for that just yet.

'_God this is pathetic,_' I think to myself. All I'm doing is sitting here being emo and angsting! I'm Roxas; I don't angst!

Forcefully, I slide my chair back from the edge of the table and grab my bag, ignoring Mrs. Robin's disapproving glare at my disturbance of the room's tranquility. Screw all this emotions crap, I'm getting out of here and then-

"Roxas?"

'_Ffffuuuuuu…!_'

I look to my left and see Olette standing there with the most gut-wrenchingly pitiable look on her face. The bloodshot puffiness of her eyes tells me that she has been crying recently and all at once my plans of ditching school come to an abrupt halt as I realize that I _can't_ leave her like this.

"Yo," I say weakly. "How are you feeling?"

She just sort of shrugs and smiles that small Olette smile; for a second I can almost convince myself that she's gotten over Pence's death already. Almost.

"Honestly? This day has kinda sucked," she says seriously.

"Good news is I'm just about all cried out so, y'know…"

I make some kind of half enunciated grunt/words of comfort as a response. I idly wonder if it sounded as lame to her as it did to me. The silence between the two of us draws on for a while and I find myself at a loss for what it is that I'm supposed to do now. Do I sit back down? Do I leave like I was going to do before she showed up? Do I put my arms around her and tell her that everything is going to be alright?

"…. wanted to apologize for this morning."

"Wha?"

Damnit! She caught me in the midst of an internal monologue.

"I said that I wanted to apologize for this morning; y'know with Hayner and what he said? I think that he was way out of line and I just want to tell you that I don't blame you."

"Thanks. I, um… I really appreciate you telling me that," I reply, while guilt tears my heart into a million little pieces.

I notice the tears welling up in the corners of Olette's eyes. Apparently she isn't all cried out just yet, I think. And suddenly, I feel like I have to know. My mouth goes dry and my voice catches in my throat. I shake off my nervousness and push forward because this is something that I need to ask.

"How long was Pence using," I ask in a rush.

She looks surprised for a second that I would care to ask, but she gets over it quickly and answers me.

"To tell you the truth, I'm not really sure," she answers.

"For the longest time neither me nor Hayner ever noticed anything different about him; he was just the same old Pence, y'know? I started noticing that he was changing- I guess those were the warning signs- around a month ago. But still… I never thought that it was drugs! You knew Pence and he isn't the type of person to…"

Her voice fills with emotion and I can see the tears coming. I move without thinking and embrace her; she melts into me without a word and begins shaking as a new bout of sobs wracks her body. I feel sick down to my soul.

How many other friends and family members had to lose loved ones because of HEARTLESS? I didn't give those drugs to Pence, but I gave them to plenty of other people. For the first time I wondered how much blood I have on my hands.

Unbidden tears arose behind my eyes; I screw them shut and squeeze Olette tighter into my body.

* * *

><p>Running into Olette like that caused me to spend more time at school than I had originally intended. I check my watch and sigh. I barely have ten minutes to get to my Vespa and beat the rush to get away from these halls of torture.<p>

I reach the school gates, cross the threshold and turn to where I have my scooter chained up. I freeze when I see that someone I know is sitting on it already. A small part of me says that I should just turn around, go back to hiding in the library and wait until that guy decides to leave. The much larger part of me is screaming '_don't be a punk'_; demanding that I step to him and wreck his ass if he gives me any trouble.

I look around; nobody seems to be out here except for the two of us. I move aggressively, yet warily, towards the flame-haired delinquent sitting on my Vespa with his back to me.

"Sup' Roxas," he says.

"Sup' Axel," I reply. I should've known that I wouldn't be able to sneak up on him.

"So, you got this rust-bucket to actually run, huh? I remember seeing this thing in your backyard, thought it was scrap metal. Guess you proved me wrong."

He turns and looks over his shoulder at me.

"Guess so," I reply, not really sure where he's going with this but playing along. Axel loves to talk in circles.

"So…any reason why you're sittin' on my scooter man? I'd offer you a ride home but… y'know."

Axel just smirks and shakes his head before lifting himself off of my wheels. He turns to face me; I get that little twinge of envy I always get when he makes it apparent just how much taller he is than me.

"I just wanted to ask if you heard about that kid that died," he said. "Pence; you knew him right?"

I swallow the anger that I'm feeling and throw on a snide face.

"Where'd you hear that," I ask warily.

"I heard it from him," the redhead replies. "He was a real clam most of the time but when he got a little based, he'd start jawing nonstop."

"So now you're, what, mourning the loss of a valued customer," I ask.

The redhead just shrugs and pulls a pack of cigarettes and a book of matches out of the pocket of his blazer. He pulls one, lights one.

"Sure, why not," he sort of chuckles.

I shake my head, my disgust apparent on my face. The redhead sees the way I'm looking at him and scowls at me.

"You're unbelievable," I mutter.

"Don't you start," he says blowing out a cloud of smoke. "You and me both are hip to the game; fiends aren't people, they're money. And don't matter if they give you a dime or they give you a dollar; money in the pocket is money in the pocket."

He holds out the pack towards me, offering me one. I hesitate for a second before reaching forward and taking one out of the pack. He hands me a match; I take it and light up. Inhaling the smoke down into my lungs, I feel the comfortably mellow feeling of the nicotine working its way into my bloodstream and calming my nerves. I nod in thanks.

This whole situation is surreal; here we are, me and Axel, sharing a smoke and shooting it like we're still chummy-chummy.

"I wonder how one fiend biting the dust deserves the attention of one of the Organization's Numbers," I ask him.

Axel looks down at and rolls his eyes.

"What can I say? Pence, he's…well, he was, good people".

First he's just another fiend, now he's good people. He kicks dirt on the dead's name in one breath, and then praises him in the very next. I should have remembered that you could always count on Axel to be contrary.

"You saying he was affiliated," I ask.

His green eyes bore straight into my blue.

"I'm not saying nothing except that _I_ knew of him and he knew of _us..._but then, everybody knows _us_ so that don't really shine a light on this little dark area, now does it?"

We both pause to knock the ash off the ends of our cancer sticks. I give the redhead an appraising look.

"Axel, what do you want? If Pence talked about me to you then you have to know that me and him weren't exactly close anymore; that's doubly true if he was knocking around with Nobodies."

Axel shrugs his shoulders and takes a long pull on his cigarette. "I'm just a bit curious about the circumstances of our boy's death."

"Your being curious makes me curious," I say back. "And what does any of this have to do with me? Pence might have been _your_ boy, but he definitely wasn't _ours_."

"Try to keep up," Axle says flippantly. "Remember how I said Pence had a worrisome tendency to squawk when he got based? Well, he got based often, especially recently. So, I've got to ask Roxas. Did he squawk anything in your ear?"

"Nothing," I snap, maybe too quickly because the redhead gives me an odd look.

"Am I the only yeg getting the jaw?"

"Look, I wasn't trying to get into an argument with you," Axel said, his tone slightly less harsh. "And as for your question, no, you're not the only one getting the business. But every other interesting yeg is getting leaned on much harder. You're the special boy that get's my personal touch- figured you're owed it given our history and all."

"You came to talk because you were worried about me," I reply incredulously. Axel and I are enemies- technically. He shrugs.

"Manner of speaking."

"So what is this then?"

"This is me finding out where your head's at," he says, getting right up into my face with a hard stare in his eyes. "This is me warning you not to do anything stupid."

"Stupid," I ask, not backing down an inch, the edge in my voice clear.

"I know you Roxas; something goes wrong, it's in your nature to try and fix shit," the delinquent said in response, walking past me just as the final school bell sounded from over the wall.

What the hell was up with him? And what was with confronting me without a squad of Nobodies hanging around for support? As I climb on the back of my Vespa and fire up the engine I know one thing for sure; Axel's right. It is in my nature to try to fix things when they go wrong.

The screwdriver slips into my pocket as smooth as you like.

"Alright then," I mutter, at once to nobody and to the whole world. "Then I'll be the goddamn handy man."


	3. Chapter 3

"…_some kind of evidence…some kind of reason…"_

**Roxas**

"… for the grammar, individual meaning of words and prevailing rules of syntax which have developed over time came into our modern language. This process of adoption and assimilation came as a…"

Blah. Blah. Blah.

The longhaired teacher standing up at the front of the class continues on with his incredibly boring, unbelievably dry lecture. I don't even bother with trying to suppress the yawn that I feel building up in my throat.

I really hate Mr. Vexen. He's the school's vice-principle, but he got stuck teaching my Language Arts class when the old teacher managed to marry some rich guy; the broad ran out of Twilight Town so fast you'd think her slip had caught fire. At least I can take comfort in the fact that he looks as miserable about having to stand in front of a class as I am about having to sit and watch him.

I pull one of the miniature ginger snaps in the bag that I have sitting in my lap and pop it into my mouth, not even trying to hide what I'm doing. Up at the front, Mr. Vexen pauses in his discourse long enough to shoot me a frigid look.

'_You're not supposed to be eating in class, punk,_' his glare tells me.

I pop another ginger snap into my mouth in lieu of giving him the one finger salute; without missing a beat, he rolls his eyes in that world weary way of his and goes back to teaching the boring crap that he's been shoveling down our throats for the past forty minutes. I enjoy the gratifying-if completely hollow- sensation that I've managed to cow one of the authority figures this school has put in place to control me.

You can scare some of the teachers in this school; get up in their faces and stare them down. I used to like watching them shrivel and wilt. I feel a caustic chuckle coming on at the ridiculousness of applying that idea to Mr. Vexen.

That guy doesn't scare. Back when I was still in the mix of things, Axel tried to lean on the man one time. We were both new here and we'd taken Mr. V for a mark; figured it'd be easy to get him to twist. I don't know the details about what went on in that office, but when he came out of there the redhead advised us to give the man a wide berth. In my opinion, he's even worse than the crushers. But he doesn't mark you down for everything- at least, not anymore. He knows that it would be a waste of his time to mark me on an infraction as minor as eating in class, just as I know not to do anything that would _really_ piss him off.

Fishing around in my lap, I take out another of the sweet baked treats and crunch it down, wiping the crumbs from the corners of my mouth, ignoring the glances that I'm getting from some of my annoyed classmates. I turn my thoughts away from Vexen and back onto my little run-in with Axel. It's been two days since we had our chat and things seem to have settled back in to the old routine; I avoid the Nobodies- and they don't come looking to lynch me.

The status quo remains God. Quite honestly, I'm more than a little bit… confused by their behavior.

I pop another ginger snap in my mouth and lean back in my chair as I put on my thinking cap. As a former Organization member, I know their M.O. pretty well. Right now, I'm something that the Superior would call a "probable".

A probable is basically a person who you think may give the group trouble somewhere down the line; in order to make sure trouble never shows up you ply the probable with bribes and threats to get him to cooperate. If the first ploy fails, the probable gets wrecked.

Axel already got the first ploy out of the way. While he was trying to pump me for any information Pence might have told me I could tell that he was also threatening me. Up to that point, everything was par for the course.

The thing that's bugging me is that no one high up in the Organization has sent some of their Nobodies to try and lean on me yet. I've already considered the possibility that Axel didn't report making contact with me to anyone up the ladder, but that idea is kind of hard for me to swallow. When he met me, he made a point to do it out in the open. Nobody came close enough to listen in, but anybody who was interested could have looked over and seen us shooting it. The Organization is big on security, so not reporting possible threats is a big no-no; when it came to Organization business, Axel was always a stickler for the rules.

I fish around in my lap yet again, only to find that my bag of sweet, gingery treats has been depleted, leaving nothing behind but the deflated plastic. Damn it; I must have been on autopilot again. I didn't even notice that I finished the whole bag.

Crumpling the bag up, I turn around in my seat and check the time; fifteen seconds until this snorefest lets out.

'_Ten… five…. Three, two, one.' _

'_BBBBBRRRRIIIIINNNNNGGGGG!'_

Ah, the sweet sound of the period being over!

I immediately hop up out of my seat and grab my bag, heading out the classroom door and into the mob of students shuffling their way to the next class. As I cut through the moving mass of my peers, my mind wanders to the Organization, Pence, and HEARTLESS.

Last night, when I allowed myself to calm down and think about Pence's death from a calm perspective, I noticed for the first time just how irregular it was. For better _and_ for worse, I know a thing or two about HEARTLESS. That's especially true for the kind that the Organization has the Nobodies slinging around the school.

HEARTLESS is a designer drug and it's versatile. You can buy it in tablet form, or "dots", which is how most of the weekend warriors and rave rats buy it. Dots are usually swallowed; the high takes about 20 minutes to build up, but once it peaks, it can go for almost 2 hours. The other way to buy it is "raw". The raw is strictly for the hardcore fiends. Instead of cooking the HEARTLESS down and pressing it into tablets and pills, you take it out while it's still gooey and cut it with lactose or quinine so that it becomes sort of a tacky textured powder. People will either smoke raw or, if they're really far gone, will heat it up and mainline it.

The thing about HEARTLESS is that provided you don't die the first time you do it, you'll be hooked for a very long time. That's what's so special about the drug; it messes you up fast, but it kills you very slowly. According to Olette, she and Hayner noticed a change in Pence's personality around a month ago; within thirty days of bugging out, he was dead.

I know for a fact that that's not how HEARTLESS is supposed to work. It's possible that Pence got his hands on some junk that was too potent, but that's my gut's telling me that that's not the case. The Superior oversaw the manufacture of our product personally; he made sure that the drugs were high quality, but not powerful enough to kill off our customer base.

At least not right away.

Still, maybe I'm just looking for shadows to chase. I mean, mistakes do happen. I round a corner and head down the stairs and out of the door onto the school yard. Instead of heading straight to the A building where my next class is located, I hook a left and make my way towards the D building, the oldest and most run-down building on campus.

My brainwork has led me to two possibilities. One; Pence was just unlucky and got his hands on some stuff that was too powerful for him and died the sad but unremarkable death of junkie, his late night call to me nothing more than the ramblings of a paranoid mind on the verge of winking out permanently.

Then there's the nasty choice behind door number two; Pence got to knowing something he shouldn't have known and somebody gave him the old hot shot. Death by overdose tends not to raise too many eyebrows in this town. I'm hoping that the truth lies behind choice number one. Or, now that I think about it, maybe I'm not; maybe I'm hoping it's behind number two. The second option means that there's some deserving teeth that I can break.

Either way, I've got to test my theories before I start doing anything crazy. That's why I've come here; the downstairs D building bathroom. There are Organization controlled dealers located all over campus; Pence probably bought his stuff from one of these guys. This bathroom is one of the main business spots; I used to work it back when I was just a regular Nobody.

As I approach the doorway the strange combo aroma of cigarette smoke and ammonia assaults my nose. I hesitate for a moment as the enormity of what I'm about to do finally hits me; the possible consequences and repercussions of my actions flash through my mind and I recognize for the first time just how stupid I'm being.

Then I call up the memory of Olette; I unbuckle my belt, wrap it around my left hand, and push the door open.

I stride right through the door like I still own the place. I take in the interior of the room at a glance, making sure to keep my hands behind my back. There are four of them; I note with disdain that they're a little slow in noticing I'm there. Too busy with their smoking cipher I guess. The Nobodies turn and glare at me; I don't recognize three of them, but the one at the back that's giving me the _especially_ evil eye is an old acquaintance of mine.

"What's going on JoJo," I ask, completely ignoring the three minor characters.

JoJo screws up his piggish jowls into his typical "tough guy" look and try to glare me down. He thinks he looks tough but in reality he just looks constipated. Me, Axel and the rest of the boys used to clown this sap all the time.

"You must have some kinda' death wish Roxas; you come in here, to my place of business just like you own the joint? Bad move squirt."

"You're running the spot now," I ask.

The fat bastard nods his head smugly. That surprise that's in my voice is genuine; JoJo, quite frankly, sucks at life.

While he's big and looks imposing, the truth is he's a pussy, always been a pussy. A real whiner, a bully and a screw-up; if the Organization has let him take charge of a spot, then quality of leadership must not mean a damn thing to them anymore. Suddenly, I'm feeling _much_ better about my chances.

"Well I'll be," I say casually.

I turn my attention away from JoJo and shoot a glance at his three goons. They look tense and confused; they know who I am, and it's obvious to me that they're a little bit scared. I dimly notice that JoJo has started saying something- more bluster, no doubt- and I tune him out. The guy loves to hear himself talk; it's all he's ever been good for.

I take a few leisurely steps towards goon number one standing propped up against a sink. No one steps up to stop me. And for some reason, JoJo just keeps on flapping his gums, like he doesn't even see how I'm moving. Like he doesn't ever realize how the atmosphere in this little linoleum lined dungeon has taken a turn for the worse from the second I stepped in the door. The kid, a big brawny knucklehead puffs his chest out and shoots me his best "hard" look. I make sure to stop outside of arms length. He relaxes a little bit, drops his guard.

Idiot.

JoJo is in mid ramble when I launch a snap kick towards goon number one's ribs, burying the point of my toe into his side. The big guy doubles over but doesn't go down, clutching the sink to keep himself upright. I'm impressed; taking a hard shot that close to the liver and managing to stay standing is a pretty big accomplishment.

With wordless cries of rage, the other two goons rush at me. I dance away from the wall near the sink and into the center of the room where I can have a little space to move around; everybody in here is bigger than me, so if I get caught in a corner, I'm getting wrecked.

Goon number two with the slicked back hair runs up on me pretty fast and I have to duck under the swipe that he makes as my head. I throw a quick rabbit jab to his face with my right hand; I manage to graze his chin, probably hurting my knuckles more than I actually hurt him.

That's cool though, because that jab wasn't thrown to hurt him; it was to get him to stop moving towards me. Slickback, like any sane person, is naturally reluctant to be punched in the face. The second that he dropped into a defensive posture was all the time I needed to move a step back, bring up my leg and piston my heel into his knee.

Slickback yelps and stumbles backwards; I capitalize, getting inside his guard and give him a face-full of my left fist, the fist I have wrapped up in my belt. Too bad for them I decided to wear the one with the studs today.

A satisfying jolt goes up my arm as I feel something in Slickback's face give way. I barely have enough time to register my victory before a freight train slams into my side. I feel myself being lifted bodily off of my feet and slammed into a wall. My head snaps back and slaps against the tile, rattling my brain around inside of my skull.

The world turns blurry as my vision swims in seas of exploding Technicolor lights; the mack truck slamming into my midsection brings me back to reality. I gag as my breakfast threatens to come back up. It would serve this prick right if I were to puke on him, but I manage to not to vomit. Thankfully I still have enough presence of mind to put my arms up to protect my head.

The goon starts whaling on me and pretty soon he's batting me around like a cat with a rubber ball. He hurts me, but I manage to keep my sweet spots covered long enough for me to seize an opportunity. Said opportunity presents itself when the gorilla pulls back his arm to throw a haymaker; my hands shoot out and grab him at the shoulders.

Then I bring my left leg up and kick him as hard as I can in the nuts. It has the desired effect. Goon number three doubles over, cupping his injured organs and buckling at the knees. I'm pretty pissed off at this point so I throw the best left hook I can muster, then grabbed the goon my his hair before he can fall over and bite into his eyebrow.

He's screaming and scratching at my neck and I can taste hot metallic blood in my mouth. I drop him when I notice that goon number one is back up on his feet. He's not trying to rush me like the other two did; truth be told, he's not even looking at me. He's too busy staring at his two friends and trying not to piss himself.

"Hey man," I say coldly, somebody else's warm blood still dribbling down my chin. "You want to go, go. I'm not about to stop you."

"Don't you do it! Don't you fucking do it," that punk JoJo screams shrilly from the corner.

I spit a wad of blood and bits of skin onto the floor. Nameless Goon number one looks conflicted; if he chooses to run out, he spares himself the thumping that I'm going to give him. But if he does decide to run out, then that's it. He's through with the Nobodies; forever branded a punk who ran out on his friends. He'll become food overnight. I can see his thoughts playing out on his face until he makes his decision. He comes at me.

A snap kick, left uppercut, leg sweep and heel drop later, the big guy is lying in the fetal position on the bathroom floor with blood leaking out of his head. Pride is a hell of a thing sometimes.

I've finished off the dumb muscle. I turn my eyes towards the "brains". JoJo looks just about ready to have a heart attack. I take a step towards him; true to form, the coward immediately ran to one of the stalls.

"Oh _hell_ no," I shout; there's no way I'm letting him lock himself inside of a stall after I had to knock down those three gorillas.

I reach the stall just as JoJo manages to slip inside and slam the door in my face. I kick it open before he can get a chance to lock himself inside. A yelp comes from the other side of the door as the swinging door smacks the fat bastard right in his ugly pig snout. I step into the space and shut the door behind me. Not taking my eyes off of the simpering boy in front of me, I slowly slide the lock on the stall door closed.

Lowering my eyes to the blubbering mass slumped on the toilet; I take in the truly pathetic sight of a sniveling JoJo trying to stem the flow of blood coming from his nose.

He's crying about how I've broken his nose; I rip his grubby hands away from his face and throw a left that leaves him worrying more about his mouth than his nose.

"Shut up," I spit at him. "I came here to get the stash. Where is it?"

"The what," he whimpers, trying to play dumb. I hit him with the straight left.

"You know what!"

He becomes more cooperative.

"It's in the vent! The vent man!"

"Thanks," I say casually, before punching him two more times in the face.

I throw my weight behind the second one and succeed in knocking one of his teeth out; I've been waiting years to do that.

"Why do you keep hitting me," JoJo manages to hack out through his ruined lips.

"…Because I don't like you."

I stand up, catch my breath and check myself. My sides hurt and I got a bit of blood on me, but I'm okay otherwise. This is a lot easier than I thought it was going to be.

Now for the hard part.

* * *

><p>It's after lunch and she's right where she always is, sitting in the chemistry lab at one of the few functional computers in the whole school. I watch as her pale blonde hair twitches ever so slightly while she bobs her head to that alternative-experimental-free form-acid jazz-post-hardcore-punk-trip-hop-revival music that she always has pumping through those headphones of hers.<p>

Naminé sits, oblivious to the world, and I can't help but laugh a little bit at her. I walk- or rather, limp- up behind her and gently palm the back of her neck; she squeaks and scrunches up before shooting out of her chair and turning to face me.

"Sup' Naminé," I say around my sniggers.

"Aargh! Roxas, you as-…"

She stops in the middle of her outburst and her face assumes a worried expression.

"Oh my God, what happened to you?"

"It doesn't feel as bad as it looks, trust me," I say flippantly. "I'll tell you all about it later. Right now, I need your help with something."

She chews on her bottom lip and eyes me with annoyance, as if remembering all of the reasons why she shouldn't care about me getting hurt.

"And why, exactly would I be inclined to help _you_ of all people," she says dispassionately.

That familiar sense of guilt lays its burdens down on my shoulders as _I_ remember all of the reasons why she shouldn't care about helping me. Because I'm a liar; because I'm a user; because I took every good thing that she ever gave me and threw it back in her face. Yeah, I did her really bad, but I had come here on the hope that she's a better person than I am and that she'll forgive me long enough for me to explain why I need her.

"Then don't think of it as helping me," I say.

She gives me one of those long piercing looks of hers. Suddenly her expression softens; I grin at her, thinking I've gotten her in my corner. I'm feeling good right up until she punches me in my stomach. With a strangled yelp, I double over, grabbing my poor, abused abdomen.

"What the hell woman!"

"Stop being such a pussy! Quit whatever game you're trying to run and tell me what you want. Either that, or get the hell out!"

"Okay, okay," I say quickly, fumbling in my pants and blazer pockets and taking out the bags of HEARTLESS that I had taken from the dealers. Then, I reach into my bag and pull out some HEARTLESS tabs that I had bought on the streets earlier that morning.

"Since you're good with chemicals and everything, I was hoping that you could analyze and, like, I dunno… compare all of these pill for me."

Naminé stoops down to the floor and looks at the little bags full of pills on the floor with a wary eye, then looked up at me with suspicion etched on her face.

"Where'd you get all of these," she asked.

"I'll give you four guesses," I reply flatly.

Naminé looks horrified; she looks kinda cute when with that shocked and aghast expression.

"You ripped off the Nobodies! How are you still alive?"

I raise a hand to stifle her questions and explain.

"Today's the fifteenth of the month. Everybody in the Organization and around half of the Nobodies are at the Universal right now. The only ones hanging around school today are scraps."

Naminé looks at me like I've completely lost my mind. I look at her face and I can tell right away that she's about to tell me to get the hell out, to not come back and put her in a situation like this again. I've got to nip that in the bud before she can definitively tell me to go fuck myself. I reach out and gently grasp her hand.

"C'mon Nam, this is really important to me," I say in an intense voice, my eyes piercing into hers.

"I need you."

She blushes faintly and looks flustered; I see that I still have a hold over her. My stomach turns to ice; I hate myself for using her like this.

"A-all right," she says quickly, her expression immediately turning back into the sour one she usually wears when I'm around.

"I'll help you, but just this once!"

I smiled in appreciation and leveraged myself off of the floor.

"Thanks," I said before turning around to leave the lab.

"Wait, where are you going," Naminé called out to my back.

"Me," I ask, looking over my shoulder. "_I'm_ getting the hell out of here."

"What, you're just going to drop all of this onto my head and go on your merry way?"

Naminé looks aghast at the thought that I would just up and leave.

"Nams, I had to fight and then rob like, twelve guys to get that stuff," I reply- exaggerating slightly of course. "If I don't want to be the guest of honor at a Nobody boot party, I've got to be elsewhere and soon."

I get that showing up out of the blue and involving her into my problems was kind of a dick move, but I can't help but feel that in this situation, she's being a little selfish.

"Call me with those results as soon as you get them."


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

"…_and different gangsters go by different standards…"_

**Roxas**

I awake to the sound of a gunshot.

Not a real one- gun control laws are pretty strict in this country. It's just a sound effect in a dancehall song that's playing as the alarm for my clock radio. My mom got switched to the night shift at her job up the hill, at the Plant, so she sleeps during the time she used to knock my door down in the mornings. I quickly stumble out of bed and clumsily plod the few steps separating where I sleep from the chest of drawers atop which the machine sits. I can't manage to find the right button that will put an end to the angry stream of patois gibberish spilling out of the clock's surprisingly powerful speakers. Still groggy, I'm all thumbs.

'_Beep_.'

Got the bastard. At last, silence reigns supreme.

It's taken a few days, but I'm getting used to waking up when the alarm goes off. On reflex I stretch; instantly I wince as the ugly purple bruises which dot my torso remind me of all of the bad decisions I've made. I open my closet and take a look at myself in the full length mirror attached to the inside of the door. Yup, I definitely look like I've been in a fight.

I'm sporting a shiner on my left eye that is entering the last stages of its life; a busted lip that has scabbed over; small cuts in both of my eyebrows; my knuckles look like I went a few rounds with a gorilla made out of bricks and sandpaper. Mom was going nuts asking me how I got myself looking like this. The old girl was spinning; I could see in her eyes that she was thinking back to the _bad olde days_. I hate lying to her, but there's no chance that I'm squaking word one about what I'm really into. Mom would probably try to bring in the crushers. That would ruin everybody's day- mine _and_ the Organizations.

Nobodies have got dirt on me same as I've got dirt on them. We'd all be taking that old Up North trip together.

Besides, I'm already a traitor to the Organization; I don't need snitch added onto my jacket. After I finish examining myself, I wrap up my hands in some gauze then go into my closet and pull out my clothes; a beige zip-up hoody, black leather jacket, jeans and my trusty old cross trainers.

I've been truant the past few days; I figured it would be a good idea to give the Nobodies their space; let JoJo and the minor character types cool it for a while before I show up back on the yard. The rank-and-file aren't supposed to pull a hit on me; I've got special, protected status- like a Spotted Owl. But, for all I know, I've already blown my privilege with the bastardry I've pulled. Maybe I'm living on borrowed time. Maybe they've already decided to black me out for my disrespect.

Hitting the Organization up during the Universal- the bi-monthly gang meeting held on the first and the fifteenth of every month- when most of the Nobodies in my school would be elsewhere would be seen as a massive middle-finger to the entire operation.

After getting dressed I grab my cell and keys and head downstairs, grabbing an off-brand blueberry muffin from the pack sitting on the kitchen counter. I munch on the sweet treat before heading to the old shed where my Vespa sits. I start the old machine up and putter into the street that will take me into Twilight Town.

Halfway down Tipton Street, I stop at an intersection, but instead of keeping straight, I take a left, going the long way around the block. If I had kept going on straight, I would've ventured into a neighborhood controlled by the Nobodies. That would be bad news all around.

While I've been truant these past few days, I've been far from idle. While I told my mom that I was going to school, I was hitting the streets, trying to gather some intelligence. Originally, I had done this to find out whether or not the Organization had ordered me to be blacked out, but oddly enough, the name Roxas hasn't exactly been ringing out down here. That made me happy; it also made me wonder. Back when I was in the mix, the Superior would go apeshit whenever he thought that somebody disrespected the Nobodies.

I disrespected them pretty hard, so what's up with the lack of reaction? After all, I'm not just any old sap.

After I was finally convinced to stop looking for assassins in every shadow, I got around to quizzing people about Pence. Though I submitted the usual suspects, schemers and children of the night to my questionnaire, I ended up drawing big fat goose eggs with every yeg I met. Much as it shocks me to admit this, it looks like Axel had given me the straight goods. Everybody admitted to knowing my boy told me things I already knew; Pence had been cliqued up with a rough crowd of Nobodies and ran with members of the Organization.

Yeah, he liked to get messed up on HEARTLESS.

No, they didn't know which clique of Nobodies he hung around with; they were a rough set, not people you wanted to get too close to.

No, they can't tell you anything else; you want to know so bad, why don't you find some Nobodies and ask them? That's who the kid hung around with.

Well, obviously, if I could safely walk into Nobody territory and start interviewing the rank-and-file I would have done that already. Stupid bastards.

I _would_ if I _could_, but I _can't_, so I'm _not_.

To top it all off, Naminé still isn't done with her analysis of the HEARTLESS yet; she says it'll take another day, maybe more. It's been getting more and more frustrating with each step I take. My Vespa wobbles uncertainly as I take a corner a little too fast and I have to fight to keep myself from falling off.

'_Okay, note to self; save getting lost in thought for when you're not driving.'_

Refocusing on the road, I took another left turn and motored through the bridge tunnel that took me up to Spira Street, bringing me into a whole different world. The rows of weathered industrial apartment blocks that I grew up around don't exist here. In their place sits blocks filled by aging bungalow houses. Once stately symbols of middle-class respectability, they now stand as forlorn reminders of the prosperity that has abandoned this town. Their paint chips away and falls to collect on rotting wood porches; one out of every three is boarded up and abandoned. A couple of old timers sitting out on a vacant lot near the corner are sharing a pack of smokes and a few brews eye me warily as I roll by.

They don't give me a second look; I'm not from around here, but it's no skin off of their nuts if something happens to me.

I keep skating along until I see what I'm looking for; at the corner of Al-Bhed and Zanarkand there stands a solitary concrete telephone pole. Tied to that pole there are two bandannas, one blue and one golden-yellow, proclaiming to all comers who owns these streets. I park in front of the totem and wait.

I'm more than a little bit nervous being this far on the North Side; this place is the stomping grounds of the Abraham Avenue Crew- the "Abes" for short. The Organization isn't the only gang in town, but that's not for lack of trying. In the beginning, before I even got out of primary school, there were dozens of little gangs all over Twilight Town.

Well… maybe "gangs" is a little too generous of me. In hindsight, they were more like cliques of kids who hung around together and fought the guys from the next block; pee-wee stuff.

It was us, the Organization, which changed the game. We came with a mission and we came with a plan; we were having everything and any yeg that tried to step to us regretted it. Those little neighborhood wars were where I first cut my teeth.

I stay posted up next to the totem for about five minutes. The screech of car tires and the smell of burning rubber make me raise my head and look off to my right. A four-door sedan which had seen much better days, sits at the corner. The doors fly open and five young men- all clad in some combination of blue, black and yellow clothing- quickly hop out, coming towards me. My stomach knots up; I really don't like the way they're looking at me right now, especially that one at the front.

'_Tidus_,' I think bitterly; not who I was hoping to run into right off the bat.

The first, and most vivid, memory I have of him is from back in one of those "little neighborhood wars"; him curled up on the ground while Axle and I laid into him with a bike chain and a car antenna.

_Shit_... he's...he's gotten pretty ripped since I've seen him last.

I put my hands up in the universally recognized gesture of _I'm_ _not dangerous so please don't kick my ass_.

"Tidus," I say in my friendliest tone to the young man standing at the forefront of the group.

Without even bothering to respond, the leader of the group of Abes drew back his right fist; lights explode before my eyes and everything…goes…dar…...

* * *

><p>"…Looks like he's comin' too brudda…"<p>

"…Bout time. I was thinking that I might've hit him a little too hard…"

Not for the first time this week, my head is swimming, trying to collect scattered brain cells and sew them together into something approaching a full thought. Through the fog, I hear the sounds of people moving around me, but I can't focus on them; they're too far away.

"Mmmuurrahh," I groaned.

"…Seems he's halfway up; Roy, give da boy some encouragement…"

'_Wham!'_

I feel a painful sting across one of my cheeks and suddenly I'm falling through space. My trip is a short one; I end up giving the floor a big wet one. Raucous laughter, cuts through the fog; it fills my ears. These dicks! When I get back my senses, I'm gonna…

Wait a minute…was I in a chair?

Shocked back into my right mind, I lift my head and look around. I'm sitting inside of what looks to be one of the many vacant houses which litter this side of town; making a ring around me are maybe ten Abes that I can see. One in particular draws my attention; redheaded, bronze skinned, dopey eyes, stupid accent.

Wakka. I didn't know he was out.

I scan the room for Tidus and find him hugging a shadow and playing keepy-up with a football. Wakka's reclining in a tattered gray easy chair, giving me an easy, yet threatening look. The atmosphere in the room is tense, but not I'm-about-to-get-lynched tense.

"You got a big pair to come up to our side of town lil' brudda; but you gotta know, Nobodies gets no love when they come round here, ya?"

I climb back into the chair that one of the Abes had knocked me out of a moment before.

"All due respect, Wakka," I say, "but you're a little bit behind the times. I dropped my flag a while ago."

Wakka raises an eyebrow at this and glances at Tidus who in turn gives a slight nod. The big feller lies back in his chair and gives a low whistle, a careless smile spreading across his face.

"Man goes on holiday, and the whole world changes on him; young brudda Tidus kept sendin' me letters, but..."

He turns his eyes back towards me; some of the hostility is gone now, replaced by genuine curiosity.

"So…you come to the North side; why? You up to no good, ya?"

"Not at all," I say. "I just figure that you and me got something to talk about, seeing as how we dislike the same people and all."

"Bullshit," Tidus says, injecting himself into the conversation.

"S'true," I reply. "I'm just looking for some friends."

"You ain't got no friends here, Nobody," Wakka says, his voice adopting a sinister chill.

I mentally kick myself for my poor choice of words. I remind myself of where I am and who I'm with. The Abes aren't going to be friendly with me.

"Okay, let me start over. I'm knocking around the North Side trying to see if the Abes can tell me somethin' about somethin."

"You want information, ya," Wakka says incredulously, "So you just decide to come up North Side way, where any Abe is liable to bust you fool head on sight, an' just ask us politely?"

"Everything south of here is Organization turf and I've just been getting goose eggs from everybody I talk to down that way. I didn't have any better ideas than to come here," I mutter.

"The streets talk; all I want is to know what you guys have been hearing about the Organization, particularly the people on their shit list."

Tidus steps on his ball and gives me a wry eye. He and Wakka share a conspiratorial look.

"We throw your skinny ass a bone, what you gon' do with it, ya?"

"…Fuck up the Organization's day."

A tremor of mocking laughter radiates around the room. The sound is encouraging to me. '_Yeah, big man; you're going to do them all by yourself,_' that's what they're thinking. They think I'm an idiot, but they're not so hostile now that they know I intend to commit suicide. Wakka exchanges a significant look with Tidus.

"Okay…put like that, we might know something about something," Tidus says.

"Word on the street is the Organization is making some serious moves with some very big players and HEARTLESS lies at the center of the whole thing."

"HEARTLESS," Wakka spits out, as if the very utterance of the drug's name leaves a bad taste in his mouth.

"They put that evil on da streets like it's nothin'. A lotta people have died over that sickness, ya."

The rest of the Abes nod in silent agreement; the Abraham Avenue Crew is old school. They don't touch drugs and they vow that they never will. By refusing to get involved with the HEARTLESS trade, they've managed to keep their souls; they've also managed to lose a lot of their territory as well as most of their less scrupulous members to the Organization.

I'm no criminal, not anymore anyway, but I still think these guys are a bunch of chumps and hypocrites. It's okay for them to rob and sell softer stuff, but they don't move HEARTLESS. No wonder there aren't any Abes hanging out on Abraham Ave. anymore; these yegs were practically begging us to run them off their own block.

"Lately, the Nobodies have been acting differently too," Tidus remarks.

"Different how," I ask.

"They've stopped trying to expand. All the time before, you guys were swarming over everything like the Scourge of God, but now they've stopped pressing us; they're all about keeping their own turf locked down. No one knows anything for sure, but the general feeling is that something big is coming."

'_Something big is coming.'_

I place my head in my hand. I really don't need things to be getting any bigger.

* * *

><p>I love corner stores, especially those ratty little ones they have in the slums of the city. Not only do they have the best selection of hard-to-find, teeth rotting, sugary confections, the clerks also don't give a damn about carding you.<p>

'_Don't matter if it's a dime or a dollar…' _

"Give me two; one of the wine aaannndd… one of the grapes too. Oh, and a lighter."

"You want the sixty or the ninety," the swarthy foreigner behind the counter asks.

"Sixty's fine," I reply.

I watch the clerk bag up my items as I unwrap and munch on my Hippo Cake, reflecting on how I've wasted my entire day. I was able to learn some new things, sure, but nothing that actually helps me in any way. The clerk puts my swag in a brown paper bag and slides it under the bulletproof glass towards me.

I reach out my hand to receive them with a word of thanks when I feel someone sidle up next to me.

"Yo, Habib," a sharp female voice rung out, "I need some rubbers; the Magnums. I got a real _big_ date tonight."

I stiffen like an electric shock goes up my spine. Frozen in place, I glance to my side, hoping against hope that _that person_ isn't really standing beside me. My luck fails me; I see Larxene's big, deceptively sweet eyes looking up at me.

"Oh my God! Roxas, what in the world are you doing all the way out on this side o' town?"

My stomach does flip-flops. What the hell is she doing here? I feel the cold sweat starting to collect on my back.

"I'm just seein' the sights," I say absently, looking past her and out of the glass door.

Maybe she's by herself; maybe there's still some way out.

She grabs my chin in a surprisingly firm grip and jerks my head back down so that I have no choice but to look her in the eyes.

"You haven't been around school for the past couple o' days; you been seeing the sights all this time?"

"Yeah, well…what can I say, I'm an outdoorsy type."

The clerk slides the requested box of X-tra large condoms towards the two of us. I give the guy behind the counter what I'm positive is an imploring '_for the love of almighty God, help me!_' look. His dull brown eyes look right through me, complete disinterest to my obvious plight written into his sullen features.

Fuck you, guy.

No cavalry is going to come charging over the hill to rescue me. Alright then.

"I thought you wore the X-tra snugs," I crack, trying to loosen myself up.

Larxene, unflappable as always, just looks pouty.

"Aww, is somebody upset that he's not the only one walking around with a big stick?"

My cheeks heat up; I search for a snappy comeback and come up dry. Larxene giggles and I feel a familiar surge of terror go through me. I remember the kinds of things it takes to get her to laugh; none of them are good. I try to push past her and get maybe two steps before I feel something cold and metallic pressed against the side of my neck.

"Ah, ah, ah. You're not trying to leave are you? After all the time we spent trying to find yer scrawny ass? Tsk, tsk, tsk."

I gulp audibly as she presses the edge of that ivory razor she loves so much a bit further into my neck. I feel the sting of my skin coming apart beneath the blade. I hear her giggle in girlish glee and shiver; she gets off on stuff like this. The girl's a cutter; not of herself, of course. Other people. Other people bleed.

"So what do we do now," I ask as nonchalantly as I can.

"We take a short walk out to my ride," she replies playfully.

With another prod from the sadistic teenybopper behind me, I find myself guided out of the door of the store and into the parking lot. When we get out there, I see four Nobodies standing at attention around a suspicious looking van with blacked out windows. One runs to the side and pulls the side door open.

"Get in."

I really wish I had stayed in bed.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

"…_the loss of friends you didn't have…"_

**Roxas**

Viselike hands clamped tightly to my arms and my shoulders push me towards the open door; two Nobodies appear out of the shadows of the van and yank me all the way inside. Some magilla shoves my face into the beige shag carpet lining the floor puts a knee into my back. I struggle for breath for the first few seconds. All I can smell is cat and old car. I don't know how, but I'm able to swallow the feelings of panic running through my body. I remind myself to stay calm; this isn't the first time I've been in a tight spot. Losing my cool will not help me in the slightest. I try to look around and see who else is in the van with me but with my being pinned to the floor by the goon's knee, I'm not able to see anything besides high-tops and shag carpet.

The floor of the van rumbles as the engine turns over and the machine jerks into life. My mind's racing as I try to think of places where they could take me, or who they could be taking me to. Scenarios about what they could do to me now that they had caught me; a long string of unpleasant images flash through my mind.

I start to shiver.

The feeling of my weight shifting lets me know that the van had started to pick up speed, which means we must be on the road right now. The road to where though? Does it even matter? It's not as if I have backup coming or anything like that. I'm at the Organization's mercy and I'm only going to be let loose when-or if- they're damn well ready to let me loose.

"Bring his eyes up," a cold voice orders from above.

Immediately, the pressure is removed from my neck and I am yanked upright. My face comes out of the carpet but I'm forced to remain on my knees. One of the goons grabs a handful of my hair and yanks my head back so that his boss can see my face. I feel my temper starting to rise; the moron didn't need to yoke me like that. My eyes narrow as they fly to a forehead displaying prominent X-shaped scar.

"Saix," I mutter sullenly. "This just keeps getting better and better."

The sharp blow delivered to my kidneys tells me that I should have been a little bit quieter in expressing my displeasure with the situation. Saix gazes at me from his seat with his patented look of detachment. The black clad figure steeples his fingers in front of his face and gives me a long look.

He inhales, as if he's getting ready to say something, but then he stops, changes his mind and returns to observing me. I feel like one of those live frogs that they used to have students dissect in biology class; small and vulnerable, watching and waiting for some sadistic prick with a scalpel to cut into me and have a poke around my insides.

Saix rests his head against one of his hands and speaks in a glacial monotone.

"What in the world are we going to do with you?"

It's rhetorical but, being who I am, I decide to answer anyway.

"Give me a pat on the head and send me home with a stern warning to never do it again?"

Saix stares blankly at me. Then, he makes a motion with his free hand and I receive another shot to my kidneys. I wheeze and double over; I forgot that this guy has no sense of humor. For the second time today somebody yanks me upright by my hair.

"That attitude of yours always was your worst characteristic Roxas. From the very beginning, you never knew when to keep quiet."

"Still jealous…of my…charisma," I manage between wheezes.

"Shut your mouth," the Berserker growls.

Saix narrows his eyes ever-so-slightly, a telltale sign that I've said something to annoy him. Most people would have missed it, but I've seen that look directed at me way too many times. I always had a way of getting on Saix's bad side. He's never liked me much and the feeling is _very_ mutual.

"You were made a member of the Main XIII because you served a purpose, but don't overestimate your own importance. Just because you were bigger than a peon doesn't mean you were on equal footing with the officers."

I glare at Saix and hate that all I can do is glare.

The van rumbles as we hit a rough spot in the road. Now, it's my turn to be cold and indifferent; Saix notices the change in my demeanor and quirks an eyebrow.

"Don't tell me that I hurt your feelings Roxas."

I glare, but otherwise show no reaction to the older boy's words. I used to take a lot of pride in the fact that I was one of the Organization's Main XIII; I'd started off as nobody and I'd become somebody. Yeah, I had been proud of myself alright, right up until the day I found out what they were _really_ all about and left.

"So...we just going to sit here, making eyes at each other until the cows come running home, or are you going to tell me what this little act of kidnapping is all about?"

Saix doesn't look amused.

"Just doing a bit of housekeeping."

He holds up a gloved hand and began to list all of my transgressions.

"You assaulted Nobodies, shut down a profitable selling spot, stole our drugs, and today you were caught meeting with known enemies of our Organization. So allow me to ask you one thing,"

The Berserker steepled his hands in front of his face.

"What, if anything, are you hoping to accomplish with this idiocy?"

I shrug as much as I'm able with the two magillas holding onto me. In my mind I'm freaking out about the fact that the Organization has apparently been keeping track of my movements and I was completely unaware; I guess I wasn't being as careful as I thought.

"The day I dropped my flag and walked away was the day that I stopped having to answer to you people," I say through gritted teeth.

"You walked away because, for some reason, the Superior _let_ you walk away," Saix replies, dispassionately eyeing me like a fresh fish on a slate, just waiting to be gutted.

"Our Organization's good grace is the sole reason your ass is ambulatory. Just because you've got a long leash doesn't make you any less of a bitch."

"WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU'RE TALKING TOO, HUH," I explode, my anger bubbling over.

For the moment I forget where I am and who I'm speaking to and that I'm completely powerless to do anything. I've never let anybody play me for a chump and even though I'm not in any position to be making threats, I'm not about to let anybody speak to me like I'm a goddamn mark.

Saix nods his head and the two goons go to work on me, shoving me into the floor and pummeling me with fists and knees and elbows. I try to curl up into a smaller ball, but with the way that they're holding me, there's nothing I can do to protect my head. They hoist me back up after about half a minute.

"I see you haven't managed to reign in that violent temper of yours, Roxas."

_This guy_ is lecturing me on my temper? If I didn't think it would earn me another beating, I would laugh in his face.

"You've managed to cause a bit of a stir; now, if I had things my way you'd be laying facedown in a ditch somewhere for the ants to pick over. Unfortunately, that decision has been taken out of my hands."

I lick my top lip, lapping up the blood running from my nose into my mouth.

"That's interesting," I say without the slightest hint of sarcasm. Does this mean I've got a friend in the Organization?

In the midst of my pondering, the van slows down and comes to a stop; the driver turns around and asks us if we want to order anything from _Donald's Duck-In_. Saix responds, asking for a number eight combo with no mayo and an orange drink while one of the bully boys holding me says he wants a kickin' chicken sandwich and a blueberry cheesecake milkshake. After everyone gets their food and we are safely away from the parking lot Saix instructs his pet goons to give me a little breathing room. Once I'm able to sit all the way up the conversation picks up right where it left off.

"So you been talking to Axel," I ask.

"I try not to,"Saix begins after taking a bite out of his sandwich, "but I know you have."

"Just that one time," I reply truthfully.

"And it wasn't what I'd call productive. He hipped me to a few facts about a mutual acquaintance and warned me to mind my own business. That's about it; but you should be wise to this already, or do you all not talk to each other anymore?"

Saix leans back in his seat and looks pensive, cupping his chin in his hand. His normally impenetrable face displays a barely recognizable look of curiosity.

"I tried to ask him about this Pence character, but I kept getting the runaround, so I decided I needed a new source of information. That is why we're having our little sit down right now."

I've never been the quickest on the uptake, but it's starting to become clear to me what this guy is actually getting at and it's surprising me to no end.

"So _I'm_ supposed to be _your_ source of information now," I scoff incredulously while Saix just nods his head. "Pence was cliqued up with Axel; even if Red doesn't feel like spilling to you, it doesn't mean shit. You're a Number; you can just order one of his cronies to tell you what you want."

The familiar scowl on Saix's face deepens.

"The status quo has…shifted since you left, Roxas. Axel's got his own crew now, all loyal to him and he's got the trust of the Superior. He gets to do what he wants."

By the way he's speaking, Saix is obviously unhappy with Axel's autonomy. No surprise there; this guy always thought of himself as the Superior's right hand man. He hated when anybody else in the Organization earned a bit more power or influence; more for them meant less for him.

"Feeling a little threatened, are ya," I snark.

Saix munches on his burger, then grabs some fries and shovels them down. He wipes his mouth delicately on a napkin before turning his ice-cold eyes back to me.

"I'm just making sure that everything stays under control. Axel can be a gigantic pain in _my_ _neck_, but he's trustworthy, and, unlike you, he's never done anything to put the Organization on the wrong side of anything."

"So he gets a pass," I ask.

"No, he gets the benefit of the doubt," Saix responds curtly. "He's keeping secrets, but I don't believe that he's working against the interests of the Organization. Still…that guy's got a tendency to try and do things that are...beyond his capacity."

Saix would love to sound like he's being helpful, like he's being selfless. But I've been around enough of these games to follow his line of sight. Not all Numbers are created equal and despite being the Superior's number 2, Saix was always looking to get a little more juice for himself. He's hoping I can give him something that will undercut Axel's position on the Main XII. The big man is momentarily distracted by the effort it talks to crumple up the wrapping for his sandwich in a gloved fist and take a sip from his drink before turning his attention back to me.

"So, when you are allowed to leave here, and you go back to rutting around in gutters with the rest of the rats, remember that you have somebody to answer to now. From here on, you're back to being a bitch."

I coil my body and try to lunge at him, but the goons are on me in a flash. I struggle against my captors as I try to get at Saix. At this moment, I want nothing more than to break away from these two morons and pound that smug sonofabitch's face into a bloody pulp! But it's all useless; the more I struggle, the harder the Nobodies hold on. And the whole time Saix is just apathetically watching me impotently thrash about.

I feel a sharp blow to the back of my head and I see stars. The edges of my vision start to go dark but before I can sink into sweet unconsciousness, I feel a vice grip my neck. Saix shakes me awake and pulls me by the neck until we're practically nose to nose.

"Understand this," he says in a tone even more sinister than his usual one.

"This will be your first warning. This will also be your last. Due to our shared history, the Main XIII has decided to overlook your recent transgressions, and you've got me to thank for that."

His grip tightens and I feel my larynx being slowly crushed.

"Make no mistake," Saix says calmly as I fight to keep from passing out from a lack of oxygen.

"I expect to have my generosity repaid. When I call you, I expect you to answer. When I say jump, you say how high. Roxas, act smarter than you look and don't give me any trouble."

The vice releases my neck and I'm allowed to drop to the floor of the van; I curl up and gasp for air. From above me I hear Saix tell the driver to slow down and then order one of the goons to open the side door.

"Time for you to get out."

From my position on the floor I have a great view of neighborhood rushing past me.

'_There's no way that they're actually gonna make me…'_

"Word of advice," Saix says. "Try to hit the ground rolling."

"God must hate me," I mutter to myself before taking the dive.

* * *

><p>Where possible, never jump out of a moving vehicle; it's just a bad idea.<p>

While you're in the car, it doesn't feel like you're moving all that fast, and as long as you don't look at the ground right before you go out the door, you can _kind of_ fool yourself into thinking that it's just like any other eighteen inch drop. Let me just tell you right now; it's not.

Concrete is unforgiving.

I came upon this epiphany as I was coming too; I have no idea for how long I lay unconscious on the side of the road, but it was long enough for the sun to start going down. As I lurched into a sitting position, I noted how my entire body felt like one giant scrape. Struggling to my feet, I tried to take stock of my condition. I was bleeding from my head and just about all of the gauze that I had wrapped around my hands was shredded. I had several tears in my clothing, from my jeans to my jacket.

Miraculously, my cell phone was still in my pocket and looked no worse for wear after my tumble. I had to hobble around for a few minutes before I found my house keys; I never did find my screwdriver. I suppose that I should be thankful that it didn't end up sticking out of my side. I know that I should be thankful that I'm able to hobble; how are none of my bones broken right now?

I stagger to the nearest intersection, bathed in the orange-yellow glow of the streetlight; it was no more than twenty feet from where I had been standing, but it took everything I had to even make it that far. Everything hurts. It feels like my whole body had been worked over by steroid freaks with lead pipes and two by fours. I get to the intersection and look up at the street signs, trying to figure out where it was that Saix and his boys dropped me off.

The signs read Skellington St. and Messers Ave. If I'm on Messers Ave. that means that I'm north of Broward and if I'm north of Broward that means I'm probably…

Fuck.

I'm in Ghost Town; about as far from a tourist trap you can get.

I want to curse but I just don't have the energy to form the syllables. Luckily for me, I have a pretty good idea of where I am, so at the very least I can say that I'm not lost on top of being injured and alone. Not so lucky for me is the fact that I'm halfway across town from the corner store where I ran into Larxene. My Vespa was still in the parking lot and there's no way in hell that I'm going to be able to walk home in the condition I'm in now.

'_What am I gonna do now,_' I think, taking some time to wipe some of the blood trickling down into my eye. I am really getting tired of bleeding.

It's not as if I can call anyone to come and get me; the only people I have in my phone are Naminé and my mom. Neither of them has any transportation, so that's a bust. I suppose I could drag myself to a bus stop, except for the fact that I have no idea where the bus stops around here are located. I'm in too much pain to want to walk around in circles, looking for a bus stop.

Damnit! Why did I have to be such a dick in the past? A normal person would have had a friend that they could call or would known somebody in this neighborhood that they could stay with, but not me. Oh no, I wanted to be a big, bad gangster and now…now…

I pause before my internal rant can really get going as something occurs to me. Come to think of it, I _do_ know somebody that lives in Ghost Town; my brother. He's got his own place, so he should have some room for me, though I doubt that he'd be happy to see me. Our relationship isn't exactly… loving… or civil.

My entire body does a massive throb of pain.

My reluctance to head that direction leaves me at the speed of light. I'm bleeding and I'm family; baby brother's got a duty to help me!

With that cheery thought in my head, I stumble in the direction where I think his apartment is located, praying that I don't keel over and fall into a ditch on the way. After what seems like hours, I finally reach the apartment complex. I'm nearing the end of my rope, but I manage to make it to his door; thanking every god in the heavens that he lives on the ground floor. I don't think I could handle stairs in this state.

There's no light coming from his window or from under the door, but I can clearly hear sounds coming from inside; _distinctive_ sounds. Sounds that hormonally driven men and women make when all the lights are off and they think that nobody is going to interrupt them. A wicked smile creeps across my face; generally, I don't support cockblocking in any form, but…. I don't like my brother very much.

I knock on the door as loudly and insistently as I can. I don't let up for a full minute. The sounds beyond the door change; the sound angry now- and not the good angry either. I hear somebody stomping towards the door. It opens a crack to reveal a pair of angry blue eyes nearly identical to mine.

"Roxas."

As predicted, Sora doesn't look too happy to see me.

"Hey lil' brother."


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

'…_bigger they cum, harder they fall…'_

**Roxas**

A pair of blue eyes nearly identical to mine bore into me angrily. If looks could kill, I would be- to borrow a term from a former associate of mine- one cadaverous motherfucker.

Bare down to his boxer shorts and coated in a light sheen of sweat, it's obvious to me that before I showed up Sora was in the middle of doing something hot and sweaty; I guess my presence caused him to pull out before he was ready. Heh, heh… _pull out_.

I crack me up.

"Roxas," he says.

Sora's the only person I know who can make my name sound like, _go to hell you son-of-a-whore_.

"Hey lil' brother," I reply flatly.

"What in the hell are you doing here," he spits out; he rakes his eyes over me, taking in every inch of my battered form.

I can see him, silently assessing my injuries with a knowledgeable, if somewhat cold and detached, glance. He doesn't bother asking what happened, which is aces with me. I'm in no mood to conversate about how badly I got my ass kicked.

"Did you come here _specifically_ to ruin my night?"

"Sora, _look_ at me," I say shortly, fighting to keep myself from laying five across his jaw. "Why I'm here should be pretty obvious."

Sora props an elbow against his doorframe and ruffles that birds nest he call a hairdo with his free hand.

"Couldn't make it home?"

"Do you really think I would be _here_ if I could have gone _anyplace_ else," I reply crossly.

My brother just sort of shrugs his bare shoulders, but stays mute. He knows as well as I do that this is the act of a desperate man. Any port in a storm, and all that.

"Soraaa, are you coming back to bed or not," a petulant female voice whines from the small apartment's bedroom.

Sora turns his head over his shoulder and says "two seconds." Without missing a beat, my younger brother turns back around to face me. I have about half a second to form some words in my mouth before he slams the door in my face.

At first, I'm stunned; too stunned to feel any anger or sadness or surprise or any other emotion. The whole being stunned thing quickly fades and is replaced by anger. Lots and lots of anger; THIS is why I never come here. My brother is a total ASSHOLE! No matter how screwed up our relationship is, there is such a thing as familial loyalty; if he showed up at my door bleeding and asking for help I- probably- wouldn't shut the door in his face and go back to boning some random slut.

…Maybe.

As I'm balling up my fist, my bruised, scraped, _the-last-thing-I-need-to-do-right-now-is-punch-a-door, _fist, the thing swings open again.

When it reopens this time, Sora is once again standing in the door frame, only this time he's somewhat decently dressed. He's rocking a t-shirt and some basketball shorts. At his side is a fit little bird with dark green eyes and her black hair tied back in a lanky ponytail. I a little amused by the fact that she looks even angrier than Sora had been when he came to the answer the door the first time. To her credit, that sourpuss of hers softens quite a bit nicer when I step into the light and she gets a really good look at my face.

"Again, I'm really sorry about this Yuffie," Sora says in his patented panty-dropping voice, "but as you can see, Roxas kinda' needs me right now, so we're going to have to do this some other time."

The girl- evidently named Yuffie- pouts. "Aww, and I was really looking forward to tonight…"

"I know baby, but we'll have other chances…"

What follows is three minutes of sappy Valentine's Day fluff, small kisses and a bit of necking; I'm standing less than three feet away from this moment of 100% cane sugar saccharine and the whole time I'm praying that I just pass out so that I can avoid watching this scene.

This guy is such a phony! It disgusts me; how does he always get girls to buy this shit? Sora's feeding her lines and she's swallowing every last one of them.

No gag reflex on this one, apparently.

Once again I am left to wonder why the gods saw fit to bless my giant dick of a brother with such skill with women.

With a final kiss goodbye, the chick saunters off into the night, leaving me and little brother to stare at each other blankly. The silence is awkward and worlds away from what any sane person would call friendly.

"That didn't look like Kairi," I say woodenly.

"Shut up," Sora snaps. Stepping to the side, he unblocks the door.

"Try not to bleed on my floor, okay?"

I grunt like a bitter old man and limp my way over the threshold. Sora's place is a small, three room apartment. A common area/kitchenette with a black leather couch sitting in front of a widescreen TV and a fairly new entertainment system. I look to the left and see dozens of DVD's and video games stacked along either side of the speakers. I look to my right and see that the walls are dotted here and there with framed photographs.

I take a few more steps and suddenly everything goes topsy-turvy; oh no. I recognize this feeling. It's the point where my body is finally making it's declaration that it's not going to go any farther. My legs buckle and I'm mortified that Sora has to catch me so that I don't hit the floor. Above me I hear my brother say something that's probably some kind of profanity; it feels like my head's filled up with cotton balls and milk of magnesia. I suddenly felt very tired; of their own accord, my eyelids begin to close.

I feel Sora slapping my face none too gently to try to keep me awake, but I'm too far gone. It's been a long day. I need to get some rest.

* * *

><p><strong>Sora<strong>

"Roxas! Roxas you asshole! Don't fall asleep! Roxas!"

I shake my brother by his shoulders and try smacking him across the face a couple of times, anything to wake that lame up. Sadly, it seems that big brother is currently dead to the world. Neither the shaking nor the slaps to the face are having any effect on him at all. I toy with the idea of putting a bit more force behind my strikes and really belting him one. As tempting as that thought is, I probably shouldn't be adding to his injuries, seeing as how he did come to me for help.

'_Goddamn family bonds.'_

I lay Roxas down on my floor. Crouched down beside him, I take a second to look over him a second time. He might have cockblocked me in the most heinous way imaginable, but at least I can be consoled by the knowledge that some kind soul has saved me the trouble of kicking the shit out of him. I heave a small sigh at the state that this guy has gotten himself into. All I can do is shake my head; this whole situation is typical Roxas. The guy just can't avoid pissing somebody off. I wonder what he's done now.

….Y'know what, it doesn't matter what he's done. It's got nothing to do with me.

I go to my linen closet and pull out an old sheet and a comforter. I spread the sheet over the black leather of my couch. Satisfied that my seat is thoroughly protected from whatever filth my big brother has clinging to him, I get my arms under Roxas' legs and back and carry him bridal style over to my couch, laying him down as carefully as I care to. I toss the comforter over his body, making sure not to cover up his head. Satisfied that I've done my due diligence towards family, I retreat back to my own room, fall down on the bed that I had been planning to share with Yuffie, and settle down for a painfully solitary night.

'…_Thank you Dawn. In other news, a young woman was found dead in an alley just off of Seventh St. in East Twilight, a block away from city hall. Details have yet to be released, but it is believed by the police that she is yet another casualty of the growing popularity of Hexolseromine. Better known by its street name HEARTLESS, the drug is being seen as the cause of the recent rise in crime and street violence. This marks the eighth death by overdose in last three months. Police are…'_

My eyes crack open to the sounds that I should _not_ be hearing. The TV is on in my living room; that must mean that Roxas is awake. Kicking my feet over the edge of the bed, I groggily stumble to my feet and walk out into the common area.

Roxas is right where I left him, covered up to his neck in the comforter and looking at the morning news.

"You're awake I see," I say needlessly.

Roxas turns at the sound of my voice; I don't bother fighting down my cringe. During the night, one side of his face has swollen up like a balloon; he shoots me a livid look from his beady red eye. He looks more tired than I have ever remembered seeing him, like all of the pressures of the world are coming down right on his skull. I get the strange feeling that his head is going to pop like a zit any minute. Roxas, apparently tired of looking menacingly at me, turns back around to face the TV.

"Thanks…y'know, for, like, letting me in and everything," he says hesitantly.

"Yeah, well… I couldn't have you bleeding all over my doorstep," I reply just as hesitantly.

God, we sound like a couple of retards.

This whole atmosphere between us feels incredibly awkward. It has been a long, long time since we've spoken this civilly to one another. I don't think that either one of us knows how to proceed with the conversation. Ah, to hell with niceties… I'm tired of staring at the back of that lame's head.

"So when the hell are you getting out of my house," I ask bluntly.

From over on the couch Roxas snorts. He puts the TV on mute, and then tries to stand up.

"I… was just… leave- aaggghh!"

Big brother is almost able to stand straight up and take a step before collapsing back onto the couch in a heap. I palm my face and shake my head; of course it ends up like this. Looks like I'm not going to be able to get him out of here just yet.

Seriously, playing nursemaid for Roxas was not part of my plans for today.

"Just… just stay there," I order, before walking into the kitchen area where I grab a bowl and a pack of instant oatmeal out of the cupboard.

I place the two items on the counter before walking in front of the TV. Roxas looks up at me cagily, as if he is anticipating some kind of underhanded action on my part. I'm like, whatever; let him be suspicious if he wants to.

"I put a pack of oatmeal on the counter behind you. You're allowed to eat that _one pack_ and that one pack _only_. Toss those dirty sheets in the hamper in my room when you finally get enough strength to get up. Don't touch anything, don't move anything and if you take anything, I _will_ kill you. And for God's sake wash yourself off, you're disgusting."

Roxas looks like he's barely paying me any attention, but I know that he's listening to me. I don't actually think that he would steal from me. He's a lot of things- a thug, a douchebag, a jerkass- but he's not the type of person that would screw over somebody that helped him. Yet and still, I've got to let him know that there are going to be consequences if he starts feeling adventurous. I finish saying my peace and head back into my room where I get washed up and put on my clothes. I grab my jacket and my car keys before heading for the door of my apartment.

In the fifteen minutes that it takes me to get freshened up my brother had managed to pull himself from the couch and over to the kitchenette where he's hovering over the microwave waiting on his bowl of instant oatmeal to get done.

"Where you going," Roxas asks absently.

"School," I reply.

"It's Sunday."

"The Kendo club has some activities planned for today," I answer shortly. "I'll be gone until this evening. Don't break anything while I'm gone, okay?"

"As if," he replies just as shortly.

"You got an SUV, right?"

"Yeah," I say warily, not sure why he's asking me this.

"I left my Vespa up at this corner store on the North side. It's up around Timon Park on the 800 block. Could you do me a favor and get it for me?"

I quirk an eyebrow. "I'm not your errand boy."

Roxas rolls his eyes. Then he says the magic words. "It'll get me out of here faster."

"…Give me the keys," I reply.

Big brother snorts as if he finds something funny in what I said. "You keep a toolbox with a screwdriver in your car," he asks.

I nod.

"Then you've got a key."

The car ride out to Destiny seems to go by much quicker than the usual twenty minutes it usually takes. Destiny is an affluent autonomous enclave outside of the Twilight Town city limits; it's where the people with the money live. I used to live out here when I was younger, but I've been slumming it since I moved out of my mom and dad's house a year ago.

It's also where my school- Ansem-Wise High- is located. As I'm pulling up through the front gates of the school, I spy Riku and Seifer waiting for me on the steps of the Main Office. I find a parking space and head over to them.

"Took you long enough," Seifer says impatiently, his perpetual sneer deepening as I make my way towards the two.

"Go easy Seifer," Riku chides, a sly smile on his own face. "He probably had to stop by the free clinic again and pick up some of that special crab shampoo."

"Screw both of you guys," I say furiously, my face heating up. Seriously, a guy screws up one time, ONE TIME, and suddenly he becomes everybody's punching bag!

Seifer and Riku just laugh at me as the three of us enter the school together. As we enter into the central building, my nose is assaulted by that peculiar "new building" smell; it's kind of the same smell as "new car", just a bit more metallic. The whole complex was recently refurbished and there's still some construction going on in the new science building at the far side of campus.

"Bro, seriously, you really need to slow it down with all of the girls," Seifer says to me.

"And why would I want to do that," I say back. To the other side of Seifer I see Riku put his hands behind his head, his equivalent of rolling his eyes.

"Because, you're getting a reputation," Riku answers seriously. "If you were a girl, you'd be labeled as total slut."

I shrug nonchalantly. "Bro, I'm just doing what comes naturally. I'm a man and I've got an urge to do manly things. Besides, what about all of the chicks that are trying to throw a piece at you guys?"

"The difference between us and you," Seifer replies in his I'm-so-much-cooler-than-thou voice, "is that we don't _catch_ everything that's thrown at us."

I shoot the two of them a sour look; just because I'm the youngest, they think that they've got the right to pick at me. Riku sees my look and sighs. He can probably tell what I'm thinking; he always has.

"Look, we're not trying to bring you down," he says in a placating tone. "I'm just saying you need to think about how your actions reflect not just on yourself, but on the club as a whole. You're the Vice-President so please start thinking like one."

I sigh deeply at the unfairness of all of this but I guess I can kind of see where they're coming from on this one. Still…

"I'll try, but no promises."

"We figured that that's about as good as we were going to get from you," Seifer snarks, punching me in the arm for emphasis. "Besides we…"

Seifer trails off in the middle of his sentence and looks down to the end of the hallway. Riku and I follow the eyes of our friend down the hall until we see what he is looking at. It's an extremely emo, slightly effeminate looking boy, short in stature but sturdy in build. He is dressed in the standard issue emo uniform; super tight jeans with an unseasonably long and heavy black coat that comes down almost to his knees. The mystery man has a long fringe of lavender hair hanging over one side of his face. He's just sort of standing in the middle of the hall, looking around at nothing in particular.

"Hey," I call down the hall. The emo kid jumps slightly, probably startled by the sound of my voice.

"Oh, sorry; I was kind of wrapped up in my own world; didn't see you coming," emo kid said flatly, before he returned to looking at nothing in particular.

'_Okay, so he's kind of weird.' _

"Haven't seen you around school before," Riku says in a friendly tone. "Are you a new student?"

"Hmm," emo kid grunts, snapping back to reality.

"Yes, I just transferred to this school recently. Tomorrow is going to be my first day; I just came early to see the school. Getting the lay of the land, if you will," he says in his oddly precise manner of speaking.

"Well, it's nice to meet you. I'm Riku, President of the Kendo club."

Riku offers his hand to the stranger. Emo kid stares at the proffered hand for a second with this dead-fish look before putting forth his own hand.

"My name is Zexion; I am a Number of some importance."


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

'…_the price of baking soda…'_

**Roxas**

The door shuts behind Sora as he makes his way out of the apartment door. As the wooden portal creaks closed, I find myself breathing a little bit easier. I'm… uncomfortable being around my brother; the feeling is very mutual, I'm sure. We've done too much to each other in the not-so-distant past for either of us to not feel some degree of tension. On the other hand, Sora did put me up for the night even though he didn't have to, so maybe this time it's me that's being the bigger dick.

'_Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding_,' goes the bell on the microwave; my oatmeal is done.

I walk, duck footed, over to the microwave and pop the door open. My calves groan in protest over having to move the two foot distance from where I was standing to the counter where the microwave sits; I tell them to quit complaining. When I remove the plastic wrap from over the top of the bowl, I get a nose full of apple cinnamony goodness. By the smell of things, little bro has been shelling out the extra 19 cents on the brand name oatmeal; the store brand kind doesn't have as rich a scent to it.

I snatch the bowl and scurry back to the couch as fast as my aching everything will carry me, placing the piping hot porcelain down on the dirty linen strewn across the couch. I ease back in the seat and sink into the cushions as far as I can go, letting my tired muscles relax and wait for my oatmeal to cool down. I reach for the remote control and flick the TV back on. The morning news is still on, but they've finished with current events and moved on to sports. After sports comes the weather and after the weather the show's over, so there's really no point in watching this anymore.

I flip to the Cartoon Channel. I'm in luck; _Howl of the Sea_ is on and it's the episode where the crew fights that army of crazy jihad weasels.

I lay a few fingers on the bowl of oatmeal to check the temperature; my skin doesn't feel like it's going to catch fire. I grab the bowl, sit it in my lap and start digging in, letting the warm and gloppy mush slide down my throat and into my belly. The breakfast food warms my insides and the action packed, non-imitateable cartoon violence steadily kills the few remaining brain cells I have left after taking so many shots to the head.

I finish off the bowl just as the ending credits of _Howl of the Sea_ start to scroll down the screen. I set the bowl down on the coffee table and belch without shame. Now full and no longer distracted by growling in my stomach, I become very aware of just how gross I was. I give an exploratory sniff to one of my underarms and recoil in horror. It pains me down to my soul to admit it, but Sora was right; I am disgusting.

Well, since I'm so foul I'm sure that my little brother won't begrudge me the use of his bathroom. I lurch up to my feet and hobble my way around Sora's apartment in search of a fresh towel and a washcloth. After hunting down the two items, I make my way into the small bathroom and turn on the shower, letting the whole room fill up with steam. The warm water feels like the caress of a beautiful girl against my abused skin- the parts of my skin that aren't cut or scraped up anyway.

Stepping from the shower, I towel myself dry. I'm surprised- and a little bit proud- to see the ring of filth that I leave around the bathtub after stepping out of it. Sora's going to be in a fighting mood after he sees that, and in my current condition I'd be on the receiving end of yet another beating. Good thing I plan on being out of here before he has a chance to see it.

It occurs to me that though I've taken a shower, I've got no clean clothes to wear and that Sora has forbidden me from wearing any of his clothes. Not that I would wear any of his lace curtain preppy bullshit.

Still, even a prick like Sora couldn't object to me washing my clothes here. After all, if no fresh garments are to be provided then my little brother shouldn't mind me using his detergent and laundry money. I'm sure he'll understand; now that my body is clean, I can't very well throw my dirty clothes back on. That's just nasty.

Yeah, I realize I'm being a dick.

Towel still wrapped around my waist to protect my modesty, I head back into the living room and gather up my belongings and set out to find the complex's laundry room. I somehow manage to get all the way there without the towel falling off and leaving me ass-naked in the middle of a strange apartment complex. The laundry room is an old brick building covered on two sides by crudely drawn graffiti; after I push open the door, I'm happy to find out that there's nobody washing their clothes. I got enough funny looks from people during my walk over here.

As I'm loading up the washing machine, I hear a muffled ringing sound coming from inside of my pants. I pull my cell phone out of my pants pocket before tossing the garment into the machine with all of my other clothes. The caller ID tells me that it's Naminé. I scramble to flip it open.

"What's up," I say.

"Roxas, where have you been," Naminé asked; she sounds exasperated. "I went by your house last night but your mom told me you never came home."

"I'm sorry," I say genuinely. Naminé is one of the few people that I can still call a friend and the two of us used to be….

Well… at this point I guess it really doesn't matter what we used to be. I just really want to get on her good side and stay there. I fill her in on the last twenty four hours; she gasps a few times and scolds me for taking unnecessary risks. In turn, I speak in an apologetic tone and agree with everything that she says. That conversation passes quickly and the two of us settle into silence.

"So…um, what are you doing now," she asks tentatively.

"Doing laundry in the nude," I respond truthfully. I can hear her sputtering at the other end of the line and I have myself a little laugh at her expense while she calls me a perv. I imagine that angelic face and all the blood that must be rushing into it right now. The thought makes some of my own blood start rushing to a certain place.

"Hey, you asked," I say playfully.

"Okay, image in my head that _really_ did not need to be there," she sighs.

"Look, the reason why I called you in the first place was to tell you that I finished up the analysis of that HEARTLESS that you gave me. That stuff was… well… I found something bad."

Hesitation; hesitation is never a good sign.

"Bad how," I ask warily.

"Bad as in pure poison; that stuff is a killer."

I realize that she's tiptoeing around the point, which does more to worry me than anything she's said so far. Naminé does _not_ tiptoe; she likes to get right to the point.

"I'm not really following," I say. "HEARTLESS is a hard drug; of course it's a killer."

She sighs; this is obviously difficult for her. "No, it's… okay I'll explain, so try to keep up."

"The medical name for HEARTLESS is Hexolseromine. Hexolseromine isn't a very complex chemical; you can get the ingredients to synthesize the stuff from the local Mega-Lo Mart, though _you_ probably already knew that."

I notice the shot she takes at me and ignore it. After all, I _did_ already know that. She continues.

"To make the finished product you have to go through the cooking process where you add in the various ingredients to create the narcotic. The most important step in the cooking process is the second to last one, the one where they add in the Codeine."

"Wait, why is the Codeine important?"

I may know how to cook HEARTLESS, but I've never had the slightest idea what any of the crap we put in it was actually supposed to do. All I knew was that the finished product put a fat knot of money in my pocket.

"Don't interrupt, I was getting to that. The Codeine acts as an agent to deaden the potency of all of the toxic crap that you use to make HEARTLESS. Without it, and depending on how it's cut, the mixture can be up to seven times more potent than usual."

I can't help but interject. "Wait, how did you find this out?"

"I tested the pills by dissolving them in a complex saline solution; normally, when it dissolves, HEARTLESS would turn the solution purple. But when I tested some of the pills, they ended up turning the solution black!"

"And… black is bad," I asked, wondering if she thought I sounded as stupid as I thought I did.

"Yes Roxas, black is very bad," she replies, the slightest hint of amused condescension in her voice.

"You remember what I said about the Codeine, right? For those pills that came up black, there wasn't a trace of Codeine in them; it's as if whoever was cooking the stuff just decided to skip that step and move on to the last one."

"So the cooks made some half-assed HEARTLESS," I say dismissively. "Mistakes have been known to happen."

The bookworm gave me an exasperated '_tsk, tsk, tsk,_' from her end.

"Roxas, from the results of my experiments, I estimate that one out of every five pills in those bags is incomplete. That's _twenty percent_. Now, you're right. Mistakes do happen; _twenty percent, _however_,_ does not suggest a mistake. _Twenty percent_ suggests a considerable degree of _planning_ and _forethought_."

"Whoa, hold up now," I say quickly.

"Don't you think it's a little too soon for you to be saying what I think you're saying? I mean, I didn't get you all that much HEARTLESS to play around with."

"I know, so I got more," she replied.

"From who?"

"From _how the hell is it any of your business, _Roxas? The point is, I got more, I did the tests and everything's still coming up black. Now, I know that don't prove anything, but my intuition is telling me there's fire underneath this bit of smoke I'm finding."

I'm hearing what Naminé is telling me, I really am. Yet, somehow it feels like my brain isn't able to take in everything that she's saying. Because what she's saying is true; twenty percent of your product being fouled isn't a mistake. You have some fouled pills in every batch; it's unavoidable. Sometimes a few just don't come out right after the cook. But usually it's only around five or six out of every hundred; twenty percent of a batch is just a ridiculously high number. No way in hell you produce that much bad product by mistake; no way in hell Xemnas and Saix would _ever_ let anybody in the Organization get away with making that kind of mistake.

Look up anal retentive in the dictionary and you would see some nice two by twos of Xemnas and Saix. Those guys run a tight operation and they always insisted that all of us Organization members were just as anal about everything that had anything to do with HEARTLESS.

So, the explanation that makes the most sense is the one that makes the least sense. The only explanation, the only plausible reason for there being that much fouled HEARTLESS is that the Organization put it out there intentionally.

"But why would they do something like this?"

"I was hoping that you could fill me in on that part," the bookworm asks in a small voice.

And suddenly, my mind goes back to that news report that I saw this morning. I had thought that all that stuff that they were saying about the recent upsurge in overdoses was just the press sensationalizing the drug problem for sweeps week. But from what Naminé just told me, those extra overdoses have a definite cause.

This whole situation suddenly seems so much bigger than Pence. I get this cold feeling in my stomach that's doing a better job than that header I took out of Saix's van of telling me to back off of this thing that I've stumbled across. I'm starting to get a real sense that I should have listened to all of those threats that warned me to back off.

Funny thing though, I'm also starting to get a stronger than before that I have to see this through to the end _because_ this situation is bigger than Pence. My friend was one person who became a victim of this… thing. He wasn't special, he wasn't targeted specifically, he was just a kid who made a bad decision and was unlucky. And if I don't do something, plenty of other people will be getting unlucky; people who might have lived otherwise.

I'm going to have to rethink a few things.

"This calls for a new approach," I say.

"New approach; what do you mean by new approach," Naminé asks me.

"Look, I need to get a few things settled, but after that I'm coming to see you. Until then, you shouldn't be in contact with me," I reply.

"Hey, wai-," she starts to say something; probably a protest. I hang up and turn off my phone before she can get it all the way out.

'_Ding, Ding…_'

My clothes are done.

* * *

><p>When Sora returned from whatever inane little extracurricular activity he's been doing for the past few hours, I'm back on the couch, clean and drier fresh down to my drawers. Seeing that I was now capable of independent movement, he tossed me his screwdriver and told me that my Vespa was parked outside. We didn't spare too many words on each other after that little declaration; I said thanks one last time, he made this dismissive grunting sound, and I got out of there before he decided to check his bathroom.<p>

Prick…

When I pulled up at my house, my head was spinning; I had learned a lot of things and yet I somehow felt even more lost than before. I had no idea where any of this information would take me and frankly, the possibilities scare the hell out of me. I'm going to have to put more thought into my actions, think about things strategically. No more going off half-cocked and making things up as I go along. I need to make an actual plan to…

"Oh so you finally decide to come home?"

I feel my balls retreating into my stomach. _Shit_.

"M-mom?"


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

'…_change is imminent, I evolve…'_

**Sora**

Thank God for unwanted houseguests. Having my (slightly) older brother Roxas staying in my apartment reminded me of just how much I should value having my own personal space. Sure, he was only here for a night and a day _and_ while he was here we hardly interacted at all, _and_ he's been gone for almost a week, but it's the principle of the thing. Part of the reason why I started living on my own, other than to avoid punching my stepdad through a wall, was because I wanted to have some independence.

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not the most introspective person in the world, but I realize now that I was beginning to take my independence for granted. Ironically it required that bruised, stinking, leaving-a-dirty-ring-around-the-bathtub douchecock spending a few hours in my home to make me realize how much I truly value my alone time. I feel truly rejuvenated. I've had an extra spring in my step since I got out of bed this morning.

Seifer gives me a look that tells me that he's worried about me.

"Bro, are you, like… whistling," he asks tentatively, as if raising some kind of hideously taboo topic.

I give my best toothpaste commercial grin.

"Why yes, yes I am whistling," I say in response before sweeping my arms out to either side of me and spinning my body like one of those princesses off of a kiddy movie.

My friend practically recoils in horror. It's clear to me that he is now trying to decide whether I've been bodysnatched by aliens or possessed by the spirit of a twelve year old girl.

"Okay, seriously bro, stop it! Nobody should be that happy."

I merely laugh once again and make a beeline towards the front gates of school; I don't blame him for being a little taken aback. I _am_ acting pretty un-Soralike, I guess. But he doesn't understand. It just feels too good to be free of that atmosphere of violent tension and awkwardness that comes around whenever me and The Prick are forced to be together.

The two of us are much better off when we can go back to pretending the other one doesn't exist.

As Seifer and I reach the gates, I sink down in a low crouch and make as mighty a leap as I'm able over the threshold, planting my feet firmly on school property.

"Okay, what the hell is with you," Seifer, who walked across the threshold like a normal person, asks me.

I shrug my shoulders and grin my trademark grin- not as cheesy as my toothpaste commercial grin, but still giving everybody a good display of the pearly whites.

"Just really glad to be back at school, y'know?"

Seifer looks like he's about to say something, but before he can get it out of his mouth, something catches his eye. He pauses and looks over my shoulder.

"Well, well," he says in a thoughtfully unpleasant way.

"Well, well what," I ask.

Seifer grabs me by the shoulders and turns me around; I scan the hundred odd teens scattered across the schoolyard but it doesn't take me long to find out what that _"well, well"_ was. It's a she. A very _particular_ she, sitting on the brick island at the center of the yard amongst a posse of other girls.

"Kairi."

Her name catches in my throat and comes out as a whisper. Unconsciously, I start adjusting my forest green uniform blazer and straightening my already straight tie. The butterflies are already loose and fluttering around in my stomach; I think I'm starting to sweat.

Shit, I _am_ sweating! I know I'm being ridiculous, and yet I just can't seem to stop myself.

"You cool bro," Seifer, the douche, asks me in a tone that tells me that he knows full well that I'm not cool. This is all just a big laugh to him; seeing me, the notorious ladies man, getting choked up over a girl. But this isn't just any girl; this is _Kairi_.

"Dude, how's my hair look," I ask Seifer.

"Like a bird's ass, like always," he responds, rolling his eyes. I flip him another kind of bird and then take a deep breath. Gathering up my strength, I start walking towards the island. I go maybe half a step before a hand grabs my elbow and stops me in my tracks.

"Seriously, I don't even know why you still bother with trying to get with her. The two of you have been dancing around each other for years and nothing's happened. You missed your chance bro, just let it go."

"Thanks for the support," I remark bitterly, even though in the back of my mind I'm thinking that Seifer is probably right.

"I just don't like seeing you play yourself," he responds seriously.

"Bullshit, you think it's funny as hell."

"Most of the time, yeah, since you're only trying to get laid; but you actually _like_ Kairi. Besides dude, you've dated half of her friends and she's a popular girl. She has a _lot_ of friends; I'm not even gonna ask you how many of them you've actually boned. You know how girls get when it comes to their friends dating their exes."

"Yeah, well, if I don't try, then I'll never know," I say with finality. We're halfway to the island and nobody over there has noticed us just yet; my knees feel like wet noodles, but I've come too far to turn back. Before I can take another step, Seifer catches me by my elbow once again.

"…Bro, if you're going to do this, let me at least wingman it for you," he says, shaking his head at my naivety.

I nod at the wisdom of my older friends words and retreat to an open space on the wall of one of the buildings to stand and watch and map out what I'm going to say to Kairi and how I'm going to say it. While I'm doing that, Seifer just sort of inserts himself into the midst of the girls, chatting up the group of birds perched on the brick island. I can't hear what he's saying, but he manages to whittle them down until it's just Kairi and her main girl Selphie left. From across the way, he shoots me a silent signal that tells me now's the time to make my move.

The walk to the brick island doesn't take much time; Seifer, like a good wingman, discretely scoots closer to Selphie, wrapping an arm casually around her shoulders for good measure. She looks a little annoyed by that, but I also notice that she's not exactly in a hurry to throw him off.

"Good morning ladies," I say cheerfully.

"Sorry that Seifer got off his leash."

"Don't worry, he was being a good boy, mostly," Kairi jokes, while Selphie giggles and Seifer says something about not talking about him like he was a dog.

Kairi smiles a smile that could melt the heart of even the most jaded, cynical, senile old codger in three seconds flat. I'm in something close to awe of her; she hasn't said a word yet, but she's already making me feel like a… a… emotional type, thing… person...

'_AARRGGAAHHH. Calm down, just be cool. BE COOL.' _

"Hello? Earth to Sora," a sweet, melodic voice asks.

"Wha," I say intelligently.

Kairi giggles at me and I feel my face heating up; Seifer is shaking his head at my display.

"I asked you how you were. I hardly see you anymore."

I play it cool, shrugging nonchalantly and scratching the back of my neck.

"I'm good. Been busier than I was before; club stuff, y'know? But what about you, what have you been getting into while nobody's been looking?"

She scoffs and moves a stray strand of hair behind her ear. "Not what you're thinking."

"Oh? And how do you know what I'm thinking," I say playfully. I'm loosening up, getting into my game.

"How long have I known you," she returns, matching my irreverence with some of her own, "long enough to know that you are a nasty, nasty little boy."

I put on a wounded look before deciding to take a chance. Breaking into my trademark grin I reach down and take Kairi by her hands and hoist her onto her feet. Then, I pull her in close, placing my lips close to the crown of her head. The scent of orange blossoms from that exotic shampoo she uses fills my nostrils.

The butterflies in my stomach are going crazy at this point and I have to fight to keep my knees from knocking, but we've been like this for around ten seconds and she hasn't pushed me away yet so I'll take that as a good sign.

"What do you think you're doing," she asks me, but not in a way that says '_get the hell off of me you perv'_. It's more of a '_let's see where this is going'_, kind of way.

I put my mouth next to her hear and whisper, "Being nasty."

Slowly she removes my hands from about her waist and coyly pushes me away but I can tell, I'M SURE that I'm in there! The mood is just right; victory is in my grasp. Now before the moment's gone, I've just got to hurry up and ask her.

Kairi is looking at me expectantly; I think she knows what's coming next. The difference is that this time, and it might just be wishful thinking on my part, her answer is going to be yes. However, before a single syllable has a chance to pass through my lips, something runs into my back, _hard_. I pitch forwards and I'm given an extreme close up of Kairi's face right before our foreheads meet abruptly.

'_Crack'_

My brain rattles around inside of my skull, and bright Technicolor dots pop up in front of my eyes. I have no idea how, but I manage to stay standing. Kairi, on the other hand, lands flat on her butt; eyes crossed and half stunned. Just like that, my perfect moment was ruined and I had been _sooo_ close!

My joyful attitude shifts one hundred eighty degrees as I round on the assbag who did such a good job of ruining my day.

"What the hell is wrong with you," I exclaim.

I end up rounding on a back. The first thing to strike me is the fact that he's taller than me. Close behind that is the shoulder length, feathery pink hair flowing from his crown. Funny that that's the _second_ thing I notice about him. The guy with the faggy hairdo turns around swiftly, an arrogant sneer on his lips as he searched out for who dared to speak to him in such a way.

We soon lock eyes and his expression goes immediately from disdainful, to surprised, as if he recognizes me from somewhere. I however, have never seen this guy in my life; he must be new here because there's no way that I could forget pink Farah hair. That kind of thing tends to stick in the memory. He looks at me inquisitively for a second before readopting his haughty exterior.

"And just who are you," the guy asks, clearly not caring much about who I was.

"The guy you ran into and didn't even apologize to," I spit out.

Instead of replying, pinky starts moving towards me. I steel myself for a fight and quickly think up of ways I could take him down; pinky, however, surprises me. Hardly sparing me a glance, he brushes right past me and kneels before Kairi, who is being tended to a concerned looking Selphie. Pinky offers her his hand.

"Are you alright miss," he asks politely. Kairi still looks a bit dazed but, with her friend's assistance, takes the proffered hand.

"Thank you."

"I'm sorry," pinky says repentantly, "I'm afraid that it's my fault that you're laid out on the ground like that; I bumped into your friend."

Annnddd now I feel like a complete ass; how could I forget about Kairi?

"Kairi, are you ok…"

"I'm fine," she says shortly, cutting me off before I even get started.

'_Okay… I totally deserve that.' _

"So… your name's Kairi is it," pinky asks after he pulls her up to her feet.

I recognize his tone. I don't like his tone; it's the game spitting tone. I use it all the time and I can tell- or, at least, I think I can tell- that Kairi is just drinking it in. Seriously? You just met this guy! I feel myself getting mad all over again, but there's really nothing that I can do in this situation that won't make me look like an ever bigger lame.

'_BRRING BOONNGG…_'

Saved by the bell; I offer up a silent prayer of thanks for this welcome bit of luck.

"Time to get to class; thank you again for the help…um…"

"Marluxia," pinky supplies before fishing into one of his inside pockets and extracting two small flowers. He bowed slightly and presented them to Kairi and Selphie.

"I'm new here, so I'll be needing some help finding my way around. I hope that you two will be able to show me where everything is."

While the three of them chatted it up, I was left standing off to the side like an idiot. Kairi looked charmed; Selphie looked to be on the verge of swooning. Almost belatedly, I notice Seifer is standing beside me with a sour look on his face.

"Well, that sort of kills it for both of us, huh," he says.

I'm struggling against the urge to repeatedly slam my head into something concrete. I accept defeat and turn my back on the scene. Nothing left to do now except go to class, I've wasted enough time as it is.

"Oh, you're in class 2-B Marluxia? That's the same as Sora; he can take you there."

Okay, I'm ready to go home now.

* * *

><p>"Class, I'd like to introduce you to two new students who will be joining our class for the rest of the year; Marluxia and Lexaeus."<p>

The guy with the pink hair and a monstrously large kid with a jaw that looked like it were carved out of a chunk of granite stood at the front of the classroom while the teacher introduced them to the class. Along with that emo kid that the guys and I had met a while back, there were now three new kids in our grade. It's kinda weird that they would all come during the middle of the term like this.

"Please be seated boys. There are some empty ones in the back, next to Sora."

'_Of course Pinky and the Goon are going to come sit by me,_' I think bitterly to myself.

I mentally kick myself for having such a negative attitude; I'm not a jerk and I shouldn't act like one just because I messed things up with Kairi. You only get one chance to make a first impression after all. Pinky and the Goon took the two seats adjacent to my own, Marluxia in the one behind me and Lexaeus in the one to my left.

I turned around in my seat, figuring that I might as well use right now to try to break the ice and make up for what happened earlier.

"Look, I'm sorry about my behavior earlier; I was being an ass and blowing up at you wasn't called for. So… truce?"

I extend my hand to the other boy; he doesn't grasp it. In fact, he hardly even looks at it, he just crosses his arms and kind of shrugs and tosses his hair.

"…Sure, whatever."

Well, fuck you too then. As I turn back around to face the front of the classroom, I noticed that the big guy, Lexaeus, was glaring at me.

"What's your problem," I ask warily, matching him glare for glare. If this guy thinks that I'll be intimidated just because he's big and scary built like a Chaos Space Marine, then he's dead wrong.

"It's your face," Marluxia remarks from behind me.

"Sorry for not being more handsome," I mutter; what did I do to get all of this bad karma today?

"It's not that. It's just that you kind of look like somebody that we know…"

* * *

><p><strong>Roxas<strong>

'_THWACK!'_

"AAGH!"

A stinging blow coming down across my not quite healed knuckles brings me back into the conscious world. I sit up in my seat and glare at the person who would dare to be so rude as to violate an injured man's rest; Mr. Vexen is not impressed.

"If you desire sleep, do it on your _own_ time Mr. Roxas, not on mine."

I give him the ol' fisheye. "Did it have to be the knuckles?"

The Iceman grunts out a warning that it would be very unwise of me to fall asleep in his class again, or some gay shit like that, before turning and walking back up to the blackboard. For a guy who has hair like a hippie, he sure is high strung. I straighten up in my seat and stretch, counting the minutes until I can get out of here.

I've never been the academic type; I've always counted the minutes until I could be free of the soul crushing agony that is the public school system. When I count the minutes nowadays, it's not because I'm eager to get out of class. It's because I'm counting down how long I have until I have to run the gauntlet.

I haven't done anything in the past week or so to piss off Saix and he hasn't yet called to check up on me, so it seems like I'm flying under the radar. Still, people tend to do things if they think that they can get away with it. Right now, there's an order going round to the Organization that I can't be touched, but if a Nobody catches me and no one's looking…

Larxene would probably just look the other way if somebody tried to do something to me, orders be damned. I immediately want to smack myself in the head for thinking that thought as a series of disturbing images passed through my mind.

This must be how the gladiators felt in their cages beneath the coliseums, feeling the seconds tick ticking away. Knowing that when those ticks eventually ran out, they'd have to go out onto that sand covered arena and perform. Fight and in all likelihood die; and there would be no getting around it because they couldn't stay where they were. Yep, a gladiator; that's a good analogy for the situation I find myself in now.

I really should write some of this stuff down.

'_Ten… five…. Three, two, one.' _

'_BBBBBRRRRIIIIINNNNNGGGGG!'_

Time's up. I rise from up from my seat and join the human wave heading towards the door, girding my loins for challenge to come.

"Roxas," Mr. Vexen calls from over by the blackboard.

I stop; my loins get a little less girded.

"Stay behind for a few minutes, there's something I would like to discuss with you."


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

'…_you real but my real is tenfold…_'

**Roxas**

I look across the schoolyard and look at the knot of Nobodies holding up the wall over by the cafeteria. The lot of them are shooting me glares that tell me they'd like nothing better than taking a circular saw to one of my legs. Staring is all they're doing though.

I wave to them with my right hand then flip them the bird with my left, grinning cheekily the whole time. I know how this is gonna sound, but sometimes I really enjoy being an asshole. It's one of those things a person learns about themselves after trial and tribulations.

Introspection is kind of a new thing for me. Back before I went off the reservation, I never saw much point in thinking about the "why" of things. I was always much more interested in the "how" and the "what" and occasionally the "where".

It's been a week or so since Mr. Vexen pulled me aside for that little chat; the iceman threw some pretty strong questions at me. Some I had an answer for, others… not so much. At the end, after I'd deflected enough questions, we came to an understanding and he let me get go. But before I got gone, Mr. V left me with a particularly annoying bug in my ear.

He said to me, "_I know that you're heading for serious trouble boy, but_ _before you go any further Mr. Roxas, I want you to ask yourself why you are doing this and for whom you are doing it_."

Boom; introspection, forced on me just like that; the prick.

If somebody were to ask me why I'm waging war on the Organization, then my answer will be what it's always been; it's because my friend Pence died because of them and somebody has got to be held responsible. I'd say that I'm doing it for Ollette's crying face.

But, the truth is, those answers are bullshit. I'm doing this this _for me_. I got no idea if it's because I want to alleviate some of my own feelings of guilt, or if it's because I just want to screw over my former friends, but this vendetta of mine is just an exercise in selfishness. And knowing that truth hurts; it hurts more than anybody on the outside could possibly imagine.

Just once in my damn life, why can't I do something noble.

I shake my head like a dog trying to shake the water out of its fur, banishing these depressing phantoms from my mind.

Seeking some relief, I reach into my blazer pocket and fish out the slightly damaged pack of Pride Land Cool-Clove Cigarettes, and my Zippo lighter, laughing at the '_no smoking on school grounds'_ signs I see plastered on a nearby wall. The nicotine helps to calm my nerves; they've been more than a little bit…frazzled lately.

I flick the wheel on the Zippo, and a tiny yellow flame bursts to life, only to be snuffed out by a burst of wind. I try again but my attempts are repeatedly frustrated by the wind that keeps blowing out the flame. I pause in my efforts long enough to look to the skies and wonder if God is trying to tell me not to light up the cancer stick in my mouth. I feel the wind die down; I take advantage of the lull to light up.

The almighty is merciful.

I take a few experimental puffs to make sure it's lit, then take a long drag. I breath the harsh smoke into my lungs and hold it for a few seconds before letting it stream out through my nostrils. I notice that a few of my fellow non gang affiliated students are looking at me; they're probably wondering why the teachers haven't jumped on me to drag me off to be disciplined. Unless you're a Nobody, the rules still apply to you.

It's not as if the faculty can't see me, I'm leaning up against a light pole in the middle of the yard. Everybody else makes sure not to come within ten feet of me; either for fear of the Nobodies or from fear of me. It's like I've got the plague or something.

I smile indulgently at the little mice scurrying around, casting furtive looks at me and shake my head at them. They have no way of knowing, but silly little rules like no smoking on campus don't apply to me anymore. Me and the iceman in the upstairs office, we got us an understanding.

I'm halfway through my fine smokable when I spy Naminé walking discreetly around the edge of the library, past the spot where the popular girls gather. She clutches those ridiculously large textbooks in her skinny arms and keeps her eyes focused downwards, instinctively avoiding eye contact with everybody. The Queen Bees hardly notice her presence, save for a few scornful looks and a crack or two about her wardrobe.

She's the very epitome of the bookish loner archetype that you see in all those high school movies from the eighties. It's what makes her so cute.

I watch for it and am not disappointed; she gives me "the signal". I notice the telltale motion and take an extra deep drag from the Cool Clove before tossing it to the ground and crushing it beneath my heel. Smoke irritates Namine and forbids me from doing it when I'm around her. It occurs to me that since we're no longer together- if you could even call what we were "being together"- I have no obligation to honor her little prohibition against nicotine.

l make my way over to the loading dock at the back of the cafeteria. The Nobodies watch me as I leave and look furious that they can't do anything to knock the bounce out of my step. I've been a good boy since my run in with Saix, haven't done anything out of line and haven't given the Organization any reason at all to come down on me. And Saix has lived up to his word; none of the soldiers has tried to rip me a new orifice just yet.

Oh, silly little Nobodies, your impotence amuses me so.

I smell the loading dock before I catch sight of it; the sanitation people haven't come to unload the dumpsters yet so they're filled almost to capacity with rotting garbage. The stench makes people steer clear of this area, making it the perfect place for me and Naminé to meet up. I spy her sitting on the edge of the dock, her spindly legs dangling from the side; she hears me coming and looks up. I raise my hand in greeting.

"Sup," I ask cheerfully. Naminé gives me a look that says that there isn't a damn thing to be cheerful about- par for the course. She starts in on me, no preamble necessary.

"Roxas, what the hell are we doing? This… this… thing that you've gotten us mixed up in gets scarier the more I think about it! I mean, the Nobodies, drug dealers, poisonous HEARTLESS?"

I deadpan her. "Don't I even get a hello anymore?"

She groans, grips her hair and calls me something unflattering; I resist the urge to roll my eyes. If anybody should be upset, it should be me.

"Is it too much to ask that I get some common courtesy?"

"You can get my foot in your ass," the blonde practically shrieks at me. She lowers her voice and centers herself.

"Look I'm not going to get into this kind of argument with you and I'm not going to let you switch up the subject on me."

"And what subject would that be Naminé," I ask.

"Do _not_ try and play with me _Sleutel_," she says, relishing in my wince as she calls me by my given name.

"The bottom line is that up to now, I have done everything that you've asked me to do from analyzing that HEARTLESS you stole, to being your little spy around the school and keeping you in the know on the Nobodies. Do you have any idea what kind of pressure I'm under keeping all of your secrets?"

I see that she's starting to get worked up so I place my hands on her shoulders to calm her… okay; truthfully I just wanted to touch her.

"Haven't we been really careful? Haven't I done a damn good job of making people believe that you and me are still on the outs? I get that the pressure is building, but don't go cracking up on me now babes. I need you to keep your head, so that when I lose mine, you can help me find it again."

Naminé peers at me over the rims of her glasses and gives me _the look_; it's the patronizing look that birds give you when you've said something that they've found amusing. Not '_ha, ha, you're so funny'_ amusing but '_you are such an asstard, I should have boned your man whore brother when I had the chance_' amusing.

"Roxas, we're in school. _Nothing_ stays secret for very long and right now, you're probably the most talked about person on the yard. Rumors are already going around about the two of us; do you have any idea how bad being associated with you is."

I feel a cold stab go through my heart. I wouldn't sweat it from most people, but hearing her talk that way about me hurts.

"Look," I say heavily, shrugging aside my wounded feelings for the moment. "You've got nothing to worry about."

"But how can you be sure? How can you be 100% sure about that?"

Naminé begins biting her lip and fiddling with her hands; it's a nervous habit she's had for as long as I've known her. When we were younger, she would do it whenever a situation made her even the slightest bit uncomfortable. She doesn't do it as much anymore; the fact that she's relapsing means she is seriously angsting over something.

"Whoa there girl, where is all of this coming from," I ask her, genuinely concerned. "Did something happen?"

She doesn't meet my eye; doesn't even try.

Yep, something's happened.

"Larxene," she whispers. She doesn't have to say anything else; Larxene scares _me_, so I can only guess how shaken up Naminé would be.

"I don't like where this is taking us Roxas. Let's just take what we know and turn it over to the police, let them handle it!"

Now it's my turn to give her the condescending look.

"Go to the crushers? What's your plan exactly, show up at the station house and tell the beasts about how I committed almost a dozen acts of assault? Or how about that I robbed the people that I assaulted of their illegal narcotic stashes? Oh, I've got a great idea, while you're at it why not implicate yourself by telling them how you were in possession of enough HEARTLESS to be charged with a felony? Yeah, that's a great idea Nam's."

I leave out the unsettling fact that back when I was a freshly minted Number, Xemnas had bragged about how we were soon going to have a man that was in with the crushers. I don't know Luxord very well; I met him maybe half a dozen times and spoken with him even less. But he's the Superior's pet cop; I go in with what I know, the Organization is sure to find out.

"Well what are we supposed to do then," she snaps, going from despondent to pissed in no time flat; I swear this girl is bipolar or something.

"It's not like anybody is helping us!"

I shift uncomfortably. "Well… that's not entirely true."

She looks at me quizzically, her baby blues screaming '_EXPLAIN'_!

"Me and Mr. Vexen have come to an understanding."

"An understanding? What type of _understanding_?"

I short of shrug at her scratch the back of my neck.

"It's just, y'know, one of those you scratch my back if I scratch yours types of deals. He's providing us some cover so we should be safe at school, long as we don't do anything too outrageous."

Naminé scoffs at me but at the same time looks mildly impressed; it gives her face a weirdly attractive expression. It's like she's caught in between belief and disbelief; not that I can fault her. After all, the Iceman _does not_ make nice with delinquents.

"I don't even know why I'm surprised by anything you manage to do anymore."

I grin roguishly and ruffle her hair, to which she squawks and bats my arm away ineffectually. Seizing my chance, I pounce, attacking her vulnerable abdomen with my vicious tickling fingers. Naminé tries to get away but she hasn't got a chance.

"R-Roxas, HA HA, st-stop it y- HEE HA HA, you assh- HA HA…"

As abruptly as I start I let her go. I take a step back and take in the sight of her; the disheveled look goes good with her. After Naminé catches her breath, she pouts and blows some stray hairs out of her face.

"Real mature Roxas."

"Just trying to lighten the mood; besides, I never get to see that beautiful smile of yours anymore."

Naminé attempts to turn up her nose and look aloof, but I can see that blush. She still wants me… I hope she still wants me… _please_ God, get her to forgive me and start liking me again.

"Look," I say, getting back on track, "we've kind of hit a wall with the Nobodies right now. Saix told me to back off so if I try anything drastic he'll probably crush both of my kneecaps, and knowing Larxene like I do, she most likely threatened you in a way which was both gory and slightly pornographic."

Naminé nodded meekly.

"So, all that means is we just got to chill, bide our time and wait for something to happen."

"What if things stay quiet though," Naminé asks me.

I shake my head at her. "I doubt it; something's always going wrong somewhere."

* * *

><p><strong>Sora<strong>

Getting prepared for Kendo practice is always a bit annoying for me. The Kendo bogu, or armor, is a pretty complex piece of clothing. You've got the _tare-_ ,leg and groin protectors- that go on first. Then after that there's the _dō_ ,- the torso protector- and those _kote_ , that you have to wear to protect your hands and forearms. The things are more like mittens than actual gauntlets, but I wouldn't want to go into practice without them.

I pull on the _kote_, strap on the _dō _and grab my facemask and _shinai_, tucking the two items under my arm before making my way out of the locker room. I greet a few girls walking in the other direction; the gym is reserved for the girls and boys basketball teams after school so the Kendo Club has to practice either in the empty classroom that serves our headquarters or out in the courtyard. Since it's a clear day outside, Riku has decided to hold our practice in the courtyard today.

Come to think of it, I had better hurry up; it would be a bad look for the club Vice-President to show up late to practice. I step up my pace, but as I make my way to my destination, I spy three of my least favorite people over by one of the buildings.

It seems that that skinhead goon Bama and those two Neanderthal henchmen of his, Kennedy and Chilly, have some kid cornered. I can't make out what they're saying from where I'm standing, but judging by how scared that kid looks, I'm certain that it's nothing good. Just seeing those three makes me angry; I hate bullies. I can't stand people who're too pussy to fight anybody who can fight back. I place my facemask on the ground and grip my _shinai_; practice is just going to have to wait.

I'm about to head over and crack some skulls, but by the looks of things I've been beaten to the punch. Bama and his monkeys have been surrounded by a group of eight students; I recognize a few of them. I only know one by name.

Zexion the emo kid stands tall at the forefront of the group. It's kind of a weird thing to say about the guy; he's practically a midget but he's got a… presence that I can feel all the way over here. It's pretty clear that he's the one leading the pack. Bama and his goons don't look too worried and I see him go in to shove Zexion out of the way.

Things look like they're about to get interesting; I heft the _shinai_ and prepare to save the emo kid from the ass beating that I'm sure is coming. Once again I find that I've been beaten to the punch… literally this time.

The first thing I notice is the way Bama's head snaps backwards from the strike Zexion sends to his face; from there, a sort of chain reaction happens as the rest of the emo kid's little group jumps Kennedy and Chilly.

The attackers work with a precision I find surprising, two or three to a man, taking out the legs first and then laying on the blows in earnest when the victims are on the ground. And the swarm is far from gentle; they're clearly aiming for the head, the neck, the ribs; all the vulnerable places that they tell you not to go for unless you want screw somebody up for life.

I realize that I've got to do something; it's probably too late to keep anybody from going to the hospital, but I've gotta stop this before somebody gets killed.

I rush over to the group, my shinai at the ready. One of the attackers turns to face me and tries a rush; I deflect his strike and give him a sharp wrap to his ear with the stick. The kid crumples; that bamboo hurts like a bitch on bare skin.

"Alright, that's enough," I yell loud enough for everybody to hear me.

The mob pauses in their assault to turn their attention to me. I feel eight pairs of eyes sizing me up. I'm not too worried though, I can take most of these guys with one hand tied behind my back. The one that's got me worried is that Zexion kid; I saw that punch he threw and it's obvious that he's got some formal training and is packing more power in that little frame than one would first suspect.

The dogs are chomping at the bit, and I get ready for things to get violent. They begin moving on me, trying to surround me. They want blood, but their master reins them in; Zexion holds up a black gloved hand and says "hold" and his compatriots drop their guards and ease back. I don't remove myself from the defensive position I've placed myself in; no need in getting too comfortable just yet. Their leader however seems completely uninterested in me and turns to the kid that Bama and his goons had been bullying earlier.

"Are you alright," he asks the kid in a voice devoid of any emotional warmth.

"Thanks you guys. They almost had me."

"You've got Nobody to thank," the emo kid replies. He turns back in my direction and barks an order to one of his subordinates to get the kid out of here. The he focuses his one visible eye back on me.

"You didn't need to step in like that," he tells me without preamble.

"You were going too far with it," I reply. "It looked like somebody was about to be killed and the last thing I want is for my school to be turned into a crime scene."

The emo kid gives me a weird look; then he smiles- or rather smirks- slightly.

"Just keeping the peace," he says cryptically before snapping his fingers twice. His followers literally snap to attention. They stand stock still, waiting for their next orders.

"We're out of here."

As one, the group flows around me, barely acknowledging my presence. As they leave I watch their backs and I can't silence the sense of unease I get from seeing them.

Just what the hell was that?


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

'…_Go head' and pick that face up…'_

**Sora**

As the rising sun begins to peek over the roofs of the houses lining the gray streets of my town, I greet the light of day with a bitter half-lidded glare and a hack full of phlegm. I've come down with a cold recently and it is stubbornly refusing to succumb to the codeine I've been mainlining for the past two days and die. The burning pounding of my heart against my ribs is not helping matters at all.

"Hey, hurry it up dude, you're falling behind" Riku says, pausing in his jog to look back at me.

"Bro, I'm still sick," I complain. Riku rolls his eyes at the lameness of my excuse; we go through this every time we jog together. Both of us know that two of the things I hate doing the most are getting up early and doing cardio. Riku, however, is the consummate morning person.

"You're not sick, you're lazy. I'm tired too, but I'm still digging deep; you've gotta push yourself."

"Excuse me for not being some overly developed genetic wunderkind! God, you make me sound like some kinda fatso," I shoot back, after regaining some of my breath.

My friend just shakes his head at me. He says that he's going on ahead; I shoo him away, telling him to get lost and let me recover in peace. Not for the first time I wonder how that guy is able to speak whole sentences after running six miles up hills and down slopes. My body folds in on itself as I bend over, my head practically touching my knees. I really, really hate exercising with Riku; I can honestly say that I'm in good shape. But that guy… he always manages to make me feel like a total slob.

After stretching myself out, I get back to running. I really dislike running, but one thing that it does do for me is give me time to think about things. When it's just you and that long, lonely expanse of asphalt, no music bumping from your headphones, no partner to distract you, your mind has no choice but to wander. Lately, whenever I've started to wander off, my mind will only go to one subject.

That subject is may my school and the new… elements that have taken up shop there.

I'll be the first one to admit that I'm a bit oblivious; if the doesn't involve a girl or martial arts or getting my rent money together and paying utilities so that I don't have to use candles to light my apartment, it kind of just floats over my head. Now, I'm not saying that I walk ignoring the things that don't have to do with me; I'm not _that_ selfish. It's more like… I don't really worry too much about stuff; I'm just not that interested.

But… here's the thing. I've got very, very good instincts. For, like, danger and stuff. And when my instincts start tugging at the back of my brain and my balls start giving me warnings that things around me are changing for the worse, I listen. For the past couple of weeks I've had this weird sense of unease whenever I step onto the campus at my school. It's a feeling that's new and it's a feeling that is disturbing, because school is supposed to be a safe place. _My_ safe place. And I know who's responsible for the change.

It all stems from that new emo kid and that beat down I broke up. In the end, even though those three bullies got beaten severely nothing happened to the people who attacked them; nobody had anything to report. I'm not a snitch so I wasn't about to say anything to administration about it but now I kind of wish I had. I'm a naturally oblivious person, but in the past couple of weeks disturbing rumors have been floating around the cafeteria about students getting beaten up and extorted out of their money.

And the more I hear these things, the more I'm getting the sense that this isn't the random thuggery that periodically pops up at Ansem-Wise. With my thoughts carrying me more than my feet I don't notice that I'm actually running towards my school until I find myself practically on top of it. I walk along the perimeter fence that borders the track, letting my fingers trail over the twisted metal.

I'm passing near the groundskeeper's shack when it hits my ears; the sound of somebody crying. I freeze in my tracks and twist my head around, seeking the source of the sound; it's not loud, but it's not exactly quiet either. I notice that it's coming from the other side of the fence. I look through the chain links.

"Hello," I ask. "Are you okay or do you need some help or something?"

I can't see who's crying, the darkness in between the groundskeeper's shacks is impenetrable. Nothing happens for a second and I'm about to say screw it and leave whoever was in there to their misery. Then from out of the darkness in between the two sheds a kid walks, or rather stumbles towards me. He's soaked, literally _soaked_, in red and his face is as white as freshly laundered linen.

He takes one of his hands away from his belly and stretches the bloody appendage out towards me. I snap backwards as a bolt of fear licks up my spine. The shock is quick to set in as my brain nearly shuts down, not quite able to believe what my eyes are seeing. I feel my body starting to shake, it's taking all I've got not to turn around and run; I don't know where to, but I feel like I need to be somewhere else.

The kid opens his mouth; he tries to say something, but he can't quite get out real words, just a mess of garbled syllables. Nothing comes out and he grips the chain link fence impotently before collapsing, spent, onto his knees. I snap out of it and do what I should have done thirty seconds ago; I pull out my phone and call 911.

* * *

><p><strong>Roxas<strong>

'…_I know ya dig it when I kick it bay-bay/_

_Datskat!_

_I know ya dig it when I kick it bay-bay/_

_Datskat!_

_I know ya dig it when I kick it bay-bay/_

_Datskat!_

_I know ya dig it when I kick it bay-bay/_

_Datskat!'_

"Why do you absolutely insist on singing every single line of this song every time it comes on?"

I pick my head up off of the ground and look down the length of my prone body towards where Naminé's lying, typing away on that antique she refers to as a laptop.

"Because I like it," I reply, giving my stock response. She always used to tease me about my habit for singing along with whatever song happens to be playing right at the moment. I decide to turn the tables on her.

"Why do you insist on sticking with that piece of shit laptop?"

She uses one of her feet to gently buffet the side of my head.

"Because it has sentimental value," she says, sticking her tongue out at me. "Besides, it's not like computers are cheap."

"Oh, I get that they're not cheap, but I seriously don't know how you put up with that thing! It's full of viruses, dies in like ten seconds if it's not plugged into the charger, and the internet connection sucks."

She manages a pretty good shrug, seeing as how she's lying on her belly, and calls her relationship with the machine a "labor of love". I want to call bullshit on that one but I decide to let the matter die; Naminé _did_ let me into her house, after all. This is a serious step up in our relationship; I think I'm starting to wear her down.

We've been doing the whole laying low thing for a while now, keeping our heads down. I've been behaving myself mostly. The only thing of note that's happened recently is that I've gotten a couple of calls from Saix. He's been wanting me to serve and report and I've been feeding what little tidbits of information I've been able to beat, bribe and scavenge for myself. Except for the stuff about the poison HEARTLESS; that's staying strictly confidential.

Our meetings haven't exactly been productive, mostly because I don't really know much of anything about the how and why of Pence's demise and the fact that the only person Saix wants to know about is Axel. Has Red said anything to me, have I seen him or any of his guys out and about, has he been trying to run interference. The hard-on that Saix has got for Axel has me asking questions; just what is the nature of the problem between those two?

That's one problem I'll have to think about later.

Settling back in, I look around Nam's room- it's' been a while since I've been granted the privilege of coming in here- and am happy to see that nothing much has changed. She's got the same posters of proto-punk/alternative/garage-rock/post-hardcore indie bands and underground hip-hop groups on the walls; the plastic containers full of comic books are in the same place next to the video game console and the TV. On her shelves, rows of slasher film monster and Mobile Suit figurines pose dynamically in between empty bottles marked '_Big Pete's Sparkling Spumante'_.

I've got a lot of memories in this house; in this room. Good memories; the type you like to kick back and savor like a good pack of cigarettes. But these smokes, as usual, leave a bitter taste in the mouth; the more I reflect, the more I want to just punch myself in the face for screwing up something that was so good with a girl who was/is _so_ awesome. Still, she let me back into her personal space; a couple of months ago she wouldn't even let me come within twenty feet of her. So, I've made some progress, yeah? That means I've got hope…right?

Hearing Naminé's groan causes me to sit up.

"What's wrong," I ask.

"My back's sore. I should have known better than to try to do this on the floor."

I grin slyly behind her back; if that's not a sign, I don't know what is!

"I can help with that, sore backs happen to be my specialty."

Then, before she can tell me no, I get my hands on her shoulder muscles. I start kneading the flesh beneath my fingers. She protests feebly at first, saying a few '_stops'_ before settling into some satisfied '_mmhs_'.

"_Mmh_… now, I hope you don't think that my letting you do this means anything," she says throatily.

"Yeah, yeah," I reply while steadily moving my way downwards. I'm getting dangerously close to her ass and I wonder if I'm pressing my luck by doing this but she hasn't said stop yet so…

"You probably shouldn't do that," she says. My hands freeze over her tailbone but I continue to work my fingers along her lower back; I still haven't heard stop.

"I'm just trying to help a friend," I reply.

She snuggles her face down in between the pillow she's made of her arms and mumbles something.

"What was that?"

She raises her head.

"I said it you keep moving your hands, I'm going to get _in the mood_."

She spits out quickly, red-faced. I pause in what I'm doing for about a second.

"…You do realize that that's more motivation for me _not_ to stop, right?"

Naminé just buries her face back in her arms and mumbles something.

This could all blow up in my face but…screw it, I'll take the risk; I reach my hand past the waist of her jeans, under her panties. I rub as much as I'm able. She sighs a little bit but she doesn't fight me off- a good sign. Slowly, I ease my body down over hers and I work my hand around to her front side, letting my fingers find their own way back to a place they haven't played in a long time. She lifts her hips and slowly we roll over so that when we land I'm on the bottom and she's on top.

I can hear her breathing becoming labored as she loosens the fly on her jeans so my hand can move more easily. My heart is about to explode inside of my chest, it's beating so fast; it's taking all the willpower I've got to maintain my cool, keep me from just throwing myself on her like some overexcited virgin. I remember that advice Axle gave me back when I was just learning what to do with a girl; it's all about playing up the sexiness of the moment.

I brush aside her hair and lower my lips to that spot on her neck, remembering that she always liked it when I nipped there. While my one hand stays busy, the reaches up her shirt; she's wearing the bra with the strap in the front.

Lucky.

She starts moaning softly; my jeans are feeling uncomfortably tight. Just when I feel like I'm about to reach my limit, Naminé gently takes out my hands and turns over so that we're face to face. I take my face away from her neck and look into her eyes, our noses barely touching each other. At this point the pace of both Naminé and I's breathing has picked up.

She half-smirks, half-smiles at me and lightly grips the sides of my head. She traces her tongue over my bottom lip.

"Just so you know, I haven't forgiven you," she says, before capturing my lips in what is easily the third best kiss I've ever had.

When she finally lets me come up for air, I ask the question that I've kind of been dreading since this started.

"So… what is this then?"

"This?"

Damn, she looks unsure. Maybe I should have just shut up and let things just play out; I could have figured things out after we were done! Stupid, stupid, stupid, fu- wait, she's saying something!

"This is strictly physical, and it's only going to be a onetime thing."

'_One time?' _

'_Strictly physical?'_

I need to say something. I need to tell her that what's she's saying, that isn't what I want; that's miles away from what I want. What I want is for everything to go back to the way things were, before I screwed it all up. The way I _remember_ us being. Anything less just seems… I don't know how it seems, but it's not the same.

"You good with this?"

She has to ask. I look up at her, at that slender frame with her shirt pushed up to her breasts so that I can see her smooth belly and that vampish glint in her eye. Those _other_ _memories_ I have of her and me flash through my mind and suddenly "strictly physical" doesn't sound so bad.

"…Yeah, I'm good."

And like fine china smashing to pieces on a concrete floor, the tension between us shatters. I get to work trying to get her pants all the way off while she begins to pull her shirt off over her head. It's stupid; we can't do both at the same time. We're just two knots of nervous, horny energy trying to paw at each other before our common sense comes back and tells us to quit acting like monkeys. But I can see it in her eyes, just like I'm sure she can see it in mine; the wordless decision both of us have made. This is no place for sense, this is no time to think about consequences. This. Is. Happening.

Her top's lying on the floor and I've got her pants halfway off before we both hear a knock at the door.

"Yo Nami, I'm coming in!"

I feel like screaming; screaming and crying. Her little brother has to show up now! We jump off of each other and Naminé dives behind her bed, trying to hide herself just as the door begins to creak open. At least the little prick did us the courtesy of knocking twice before he just barged in.

A pudgy, fair haired youth a few years younger than us walks into the room, a sly look in his eye and a knowing leer on his face.

"Oh, so you were in here."

That little weed knows damn well that she was in here, with company, company who is known to get violent when somebody cock blocks him. He knows exactly what he did.

"What the hell do you want D," she snaps. The tone of her voice suggests that she doesn't know whether to feel relieved or pissed off

"Just need to borrow your calculator for my math homework."

After providing the little hellspawn with his desired calculator I try to get the moment going again, but she shuts me down.

"Don't," she says to me when I try to touch her again. My hands fall to my sides and we both avoid making eye contact with the other.

It's clear that the moment has passed. Shit, this has gotten awkward; I'm gonna kill that kid.

Naminé picks up her remote.

"Let's see what's on TV," she says and begins flipping through channels rapidly. She's trying to defuse some of the tension hanging over the room; it's not working.

"Naminé, I… hold up, go back two channels!"

I'm about to say something when I spy something that makes me double-take; a mop of bright pink hair.

'…_Oh, it's most definitely a shock. I mean, you hear about stuff like happening in Twilight Town all the time, but Destiny just isn't a place where stuff like this happens…' _

I'm seeing it, but I'm not quite believing it.

"What the fuck is Marluxia doing on TV," I say out loud. Naminé asks me who Marluxia is but I don't really hear her. The anchor lady with the weird name comes back up on the screen.

'_Once again, those are a few of the student reactions to the shocking crime that occurred earlier today on the campus of Ansem-Wise High School in Destiny. For those of you just joining us, our top news story, a homicide in the picture-perfect alcove outside of Twilight Town. Early this morning two young men, the victims of an apparent stabbing, were found by a jogger. One of the young men was declared dead at the scene but the other was taken to St. Mariannu Memorial Hospital in critical condition. Further details are being withheld for the surviving victim's safety. In other news…_'

I collect my shoes from the corner and pull them on in a rush. I have to get out of here, get out to Destiny as quick as possible.

"Roxas, where are you going in such a rush," Naminé chirps from her bed.

"I told you something was going to happen if we just waited for long enough," I reply; I've finished tying my shoes and am heading for the door. She catches me by the elbow, stopping me in my tracks.

She looks worried, as if she suspects that I'm about to do something stupid. I smile warmly at her and kiss her on her forehead.

"You'll see me later," she asks me.

"I'll see you later," I answer.

I whip around and beat my feet out of her decaying town house, heading out to my Vespa sitting out on the street.

Marluxia… goddamnit! What the hell was he doing in Destiny? Didn't that reporter who was interviewing him say he was a student at Ansem-Wise? If that megalomaniacal proto-queer going to that school, then he definitely has his hand in it somewhere.

As I power the old girl up and pull out onto the road I realize that I am once again heading into the unknown without much of a plan as to what I'm going to do when I get there.

That's seems to be becoming a theme of mine.


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

'…_recognize the underworld since I was young…'_

**Roxas**

St. Mariannu Memorial Hospital. The building is made of porcelain white stone and there are hundreds of windows. Everything looks high-tech and futuristic, completely the opposite of crooked-ass Calisota County General- the place where people without insurance-i.e. most of the people I stay around- go. I know that my eyes are playing tricks on me but, hand to God, it looks as if the damn building is… sparkling.

I park my Vespa in a parking lot and just sort of sit there; I still haven't come up with an actual plan. I tried to come up with something while I was driving over here, but all I had on my mind was Naminé and seeing Marluxia on TV; mostly Naminé though. Now that the beast is right in front of me though, I've become much more focused on the task at hand.

Sneaking into a hospital in Twilight Town is a pretty daunting task; the crushers keep a close eye on the place. I can only imagine the kind of headache doing the same thing would be here in the land of milk and honey. I'm not sure if I can do this by myself. Unfortunately for me I don't really have any friends besides Naminé and there's no way in hell she'd do something like what I'm thinking of doing. Not like I could ask her to do this for me, anyway.

I take a deep breath and repeat the same phrase in my head, over and over again. '_At least it's not Twilight Town_'. If I was back at home, I wouldn't try this at all. But I'm not at home and I should remember not to give these lace-wig pricks too much credit. This is Destiny; Destiny cops can't count to twenty one without dropping their pants. I'm probably just over-thinking the whole situation.

Y'know what? Fuck it; time to just go for it and see what happens.

I hop off of my Vespa and start walking towards the entrance of the hospital, trying to think of something to say once I show up at the front desk. The automatic doors go _swish_ as I pass through them and make my way towards the front desk.

There's a candy striper sitting behind it; a young one, kinda cute too. Suddenly I'm feeling a little better about my chances. I sidle up to the counter and lean slightly over the edge, doing my best to look cool. The candy striper and I lock eyes; I smile slightly and she smiles back politely revealing a mouthful of braces.

"Hello sir, how can I help you," she asks.

"I can think of a couple of ways," I reply.

She raises an eyebrow at my subliminal pickup line and kind of gives me that '_is he for real_' look birds give you when they don't know whether they should be impressed or repelled. A neutral reaction; I was hoping for something stronger. Now that I've stepped in it, nothing to do except press on and see where things take me.

"Sir, do you have an ailment or are you here from some other reason. Visiting hours are almost over so…"

"C'mon, you don't have to be so formal with me, calling me sir makes me sound like an old man. You can call me Roxas."

"Sir…"

"Roxas," I cut her off and lean further over the countertop.

She kind of shies away from me; I'm making her nice and uncomfortable. I just hope that it's the _good_ kind of uncomfortable. She starts avoiding eye contact with me and busies herself with some of the papers at her fingertips. I take the opportunity to look at the list of patients sitting next to her; it's a little hard reading names seeing as how they're upside down but I still manage to find one that I can decipher. Unfortunately she snatches my attention away before I can even get close to seeing any room numbers.

"Sir," the girl repeats, her tone indicating that she really has no idea about what to do with me and its making her uncomfortable. Not the good kind either.

"I'm sorry but I really need to…"

"Look I'm sorry to be bothering you like this," I say, quickly cutting her off before she gets a chance to dismiss me or call for help.

"But I'm very concerned about a family friend that was brought here earlier today. My cousin called me, but my phone was off and I really just received the message, so I just rushed over here! I just need to see her."

I do my very best to pack as much false sincerity as I can stuff into those statements and hope that she is soft-hearted enough to do something that she really shouldn't be doing. I make sure to stare into her face intently. I mean, really staring her down; not to intimidate her or anything, just to let her know that I'm very serious about what I said and that it's important to me that she let me up to see my poor, injured friend. The way her expression softens, I get the feeling that she might just be buying it.

The candystriper starts chewing her bottom lip and cutting her eyes from side to side, focusing a furtive gaze on me for a fraction of a second before flitting off to focus on something else. Judging by the look on her face, it's clear that she's having a little internal debate trying to figure out what to do with me. What is less clear is which side is winning; the one that's saying she should help me out or the one that's telling her that I'm suspicious and she'd be better off calling security. My gut is telling me that things aren't going to go my way.

I lean away from the countertop; I stand up straight and I try to hide the frustration that's building on my face.

"Look, I'm sorry about this," I tell the girl sitting behind the desk.

"It's not fair of me to be asking favors from you that could get you in trouble. I just… look, I sorry. Just forget about what I asked you. Thanks anyway."

Damn. Well… that didn't get me anywhere.

I turn around and start walking away; I really need to start planning things out. The whole reason I came here was to see if I could have a chat with the kid that had gotten stabbed up. Never mind that I don't know what the kid's name is, so I won't be able to know what room he would be in.

"Um… hey! Hold up a second," a timorous voice announces from behind me.

Startled, I turn around to see the girl behind the desk. She beckons for me to come back, but keeps her eyes down, making sure not to meet my gaze. As I get back over to the desk, she's still not looking up at me.

"Look, I'm sorry about what happened to your friend, but I can't really help you out. I can get into real trouble for letting some random person off of the street come in after visiting hours."

That apologetic tone of hers gets on my nerves; if it's that much of a pain for you, then why the hell did you call me back over here?

"But.."

She adds a pregnant pause at the end of that but.

"…if someone were to look over the countertop and spy some names from the patient list while I was unaware, then that would be a completely different deal."

I feel the edges of my mouth rising slightly of their own accord. Could I actually be catching a lucky break?

"Thank you very much for this…"

I lean over the counter while candystriper turns to her side and makes a display of shuffling some papers, making very sure to not see what I'm doing.

"Okay," I mutter to myself. "Just where are you."

* * *

><p>Room 415.<p>

It's taken me a good minute to find this sap's room, but I guess that I should be thankful that most of the people on that patient list were women. It's been pretty hard to avoid the hospital staff, but I've managed to stay off the radar somehow. Even more amazing was the fact that the rooms I have been in, I didn't end up freaking anybody out and having a bunch of monkey-men coming to carry me away. I'm already pushing my luck walking the hallways like this so long after visiting hours. Somebody catches me and I'm food for the crushers- I'd hate to have my mom get that late night call that begins _'Ms. Roxas, we have your son in custody'_.

It's been a good long time since she got one of those, and I'm in no hurry to put her through that again.

I check the hallway; I look left, then I look right and left one more time. I'm all clear; I turn the handle and quickly slip inside, doing my absolute best to be as stealthy and silent as possible. The hinges on the door barely make a peep and once again I'm amazed at just how much money the people out here have got to splash around.

Seriously, who has ever heard of a door that doesn't squeak- not even a little bit?

The room is momentarily brightened by the light from the hallway before receding back into inky darkness. As the door shuts behind me, I stand still and listen.

Nothing.

I guess the brief illumination brought to the room by my opening of the door wasn't enough to wake up the guy in the bed. That or, he's smart enough to pretend like he's asleep and has already buzzed the orderlies to his room and in a few seconds I'll be caught in a very suspicious position.

Well, if I'm on a time limit, I'd better hurry it up then.

Silently stepping towards the bed, I look down to see that the kid is sound asleep. I feel around in the dark until I find the bedside lamp and flip the switch, bringing a little more light into the room.

_Click_…

As the light comes on, I get my first good look of the kid. He's pretty simple looking and is rocking that shoulder-length-metro-douchboy haircut that's seems to be so popular nowadays. He probably wears tiny fedoras and the skinny jeans with the rip in the knee.

Oh shit, he's starting to wake up!

As the kid's eyes slowly begin to creak open, I spring into action. My right hand strikes out and clamps down hard over his mouth. Me left snatches at his wrist and places the appendage in a death grip so that he can't click on the panic button to call for help. Obviously, my unexpected assault makes him freak the _fuck_ out and he starts to struggle.

I throw my weight down on his body. He's shrieking beneath my hand and all the while I'm trying to tell him that I'm not here to hurt him; that I'm a friend and that I actually want to help him. Of course, nothing's getting through the blind panic. Damn! It!

I have no idea how much noise we're making, but it's definitely way more than what should be coming from a patient's room late at night. Trying to get a better handle on things, I put more of my weight onto his body; the kid starts shuddering underneath me, but his strength seems to be diminishing. I'm probably putting pressure on his wounds or something; that, or I'm smothering him.

"Look, for the last time. I'm not here to hurt you. If I were here to finish you off, I could have killed you while you were asleep," I say through gritted teeth.

"But if you keep on acting like a bitch, I am going to hurt you. _Badly_. You understand."

Beneath me, he nods, the fear evident in his eyes. Yeah, I know I'm being a jerk and no, it isn't any fun for me, but I'm not going to get anywhere by being nice. The terror tells me that he understands.

I let him go.

Immediately, the kid sits up. Rubs his wrist and looks at me with that scared puppy dog expression; next comes the inevitable question.

"Who the hell are you man?"

Fortunately, I've thought ahead and came up with an appropriate alias.

"Long-rod von Huge-n-dong," I say matter-of-factly. The look on his face is priceless.

"But that's not really important. What's important is that you tell me why the Nobodies decided that you were worth murdering."

The kid breaks eye contact with me and mumbles something that I can't quite make out. He suddenly finds something very interesting to look at in his lap.

"Hey," I snap. "You remember what I said about what I was going to do if you kept acting like a little bitch!"

"I said I didn't do anything man!"

"That's bull," I reply quickly. "I know the Nobodies; they don't do anything for no reason. You must have done something."

"No, seriously! I swear on my grandmother's grave, those bastards had no right to do what they did to me!"

I cringe back, surprised by just how adamant he sounds. I put a finger to my lips and try to shush him up.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, just calm it down buddy," I say, trying to get him to calm down and, more importantly, get him to lower his voice.

The last thing that I need now is to get caught after going to all of the trouble of finding him.

"You say you didn't do anything, then, sure, you didn't do anything," I say, trying to sound reassuring.

"All I want is the straight."

The kid looks at me through his bangs, cagily aware that I was contradicting my earlier statement. Okay, time to start this over.

"How about you just tell me the story of how you ended up here?"

His face goes even paler than it already was and he buries his face into his hands. His shoulders droop and I notice he starts shaking a little bit. Oh no…

Nonononononononononono…

'_Sob, sob.'_

God damnit!

I have got absolutely no skill when it comes to dealing with crying people. Still, I can't help but feel some sympathy for the guy; coming a few centimeters from death isn't something a sane person can just shrug off like nothing. I don't say anything. I just stand there, throwing my eyes around the room and examining the surprisingly un-crappy hospital furniture they've got here; anything to avoid looking at the kid while he's in one of his nadir moments.

Eventually- thankfully- he doesn't have a complete breakdown and gets his sniffles under control. His eyes are still red and puffy, his nose is still runny. But his jaw isn't quivering; he's ready to talk.

"I'm, or, y'know I-I was a dealer," he begins.

"What were you pushing," I ask.

"I was strictly bush league. Weed mostly; I've also got- make that had- a thing with this pharmacist from Greenhaven and he slid some of the extra pills my way every now and then when somebody wants to special-order."

"How much were you holding?"

At this point the kid rattles out a hollow chuckle. Not the one of the humor filled ones; I'm talking about that hollow, mirthless, grizzled old gunfighter from the spaghetti westerns chuckle. It's creepy every time I hear somebody do that.

"Not weight," he says adamantly. "I had jack shit."

"Seriously," I ask, a bit incredulous. I wonder if the kid is selling himself short; after all, the Organization that I remember was into frying big fish. From what the kid with the douchey hair is saying, he was barely a guppy.

"I'm strictly small time," he insisted. "I wasn't moving bricks; I was barely moving pennies."

"Okay, so when did trouble come knocking at your door," I question.

The kid sort of shutters and I'm afraid that he's going to start crying again but he steadies himself pretty quickly.

"Not too long ago; a couple weeks ago is when I first heard about them- the Nobodies. I remember that I was going to re-up from my connection out in the Pride Lands and he told me about how word on the streets were that there was movement down in Twilight Town. Rumor was somebody was looking to expand out to Destiny."

"And how did that strike you?"

He looks at me grimly.

"I didn't like the sound of that. I don't- I didn't- do business with anybody from T-Town. Everybody knows the fellas out there play the game rough; they're nothing but animals!"

"Yeah. We can be real pricks," I say emotionlessly and watch the sap go stiff. Then he starts to sputter out an apology I have to tell him to shut the hell up and get back to the story.

He looks apprehensive, but a little friendly coaxing from me loosens up his tongue.

"A-anyway; I was just minding my own business, selling my wares in my spot at Ansem-Wise when, one day, these guys just show up. It was some pink-haired guy and some big ginger gorilla…"

"Marluxia and Lex," I mutter under my breath.

"Yeah, yeah, that's them. They told me that I was '_no longer an independent contractor'_. I was working for them now and I was going to sell what they gave me, and only what they gave me. And then they just left. I didn't get to say word one."

He pauses and absentmindedly touches the places where he got stabbed, before moving on.

"I didn't know of either of these guys by word or reputation, but I knew that they scared me. Something told me that if I got in with them, I'd be getting in way too deep."

"So, what'd you do," I asked.

"I quit," he replied quickly. "I left that meeting and I told everybody that I had ever done business with that I was going back to being a square from the burbs. I know I'm not cut out for any of that _real_ gangster shit."

"And I'm guessing that they didn't take your retirement too well."

I think I'm starting to get the picture but, for the life of me, I can't quite grasp what it's supposed to be showing me.

"That's the thing; I'd quit weeks ago. I put the word out and I sold or gave up my entire stash to friends and started walking the straight and narrow. None of the T-Town boys came to bother me, so I thought I was cool."

"So what changed," I asked. "How did you and that other kid end up bleeding and dying at school on a weekend?"

"It was a kid named Zexion; he stopped me in the hallway that Friday. He told me that he had some business with me and that he expected to meet me at Ansem-Wise. _Expected_, man; when I showed up there, Zexion, some of his boys and the dead guy- Joby's his… was his name- were already there."

"Who's this Joby guy," I ask at the introduction of the new name.

I also wondered at the fact that he said that Zexion was the one who met him at the school. From what I remember, Zex loved to think of himself as a _'finesse man'_- his words, not mine. In an event like this, I was expecting to hear that Marluxia or Lexaeus were the ones who led the stabbing.

"Joby was guy I knew from around," the kid replied. "We never hung out but I know that he dealt just like me. When I got out of the game, he stayed in and got put on the new crowd's payroll. I remember he seemed kind of nervous."

At this point, the kid took another pause. I could tell that he was steeling himself; gathering some fortitude as he was about to recount what happened to him.

"Zexion and his boys took us behind the groundskeepers shack. I was scared, but not too scared, y'know. It was tense, but I wasn't expecting anything like what was about to happen."

The kid is on the verge of tears, the cracks appearing in his voice, but he keeps it up.

"We got back there and then that little emo freak starts talking about how me and Joby have stolen from the Organization; how we broke protocol and how an example had to be set. What is that bullshit, man? I don't know if Joby shorted them or not, but I didn't do anything! Why did this have to happen to me?"

He looks at me imploringly, his eyes begging me for an answer. It's like he wants some kind of explanation for why this had to happen to him, but has given up on ever finding one.

But the really screwed up thing is I've got an answer for him. It's all too easy for me to figure out. When it comes to the Organization, you don't get to decide things on your own. This poor bastard thought that if he just gave up and got out of the game, then the Nobodies would leave him alone. Too bad he had decided to do that _after_ they had come to see him that first time.

As far as the Organization was concerned, he was working for _them_. Those drugs that he gave away and sold didn't belong to _him_; they were the property of the _Organization_. To them, what he did was the same as if they had consigned him one hundred tops of HEARTLESS and he had decided to flip them and not deliver the Organization's cut.

He thought he was free, but he was already a slave. If you're a dealer on the Organization payroll and you want to stop slanging, you ask permission and if you don't receive the Superior's blessing, you're stuck where you are.

Murder, however, typically isn't the Nobodies first course of action when somebody shorts them. But, then again, Marluxia always was the violent type and with him running things- and I _know_ he's at the head of all this- he probably thought an example needed to be set.

This whole analysis of the situation takes place inside of my head. All I'm able to do is give the kid a sympathetic pat on the shoulder because there's no way I can tell him any of what just occurred to me.

It's a small mercy but I figure that he doesn't need to know that he almost died just because some assholes wanted to prove a point.


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12**

'…_the reason all lesbians hate dick…'_

**Roxas**

The Vespa's motor hums underneath me as I maneuver down the road; say goodbye modern concrete, fiberglass and pre-fabricated Destiny and hello to muddy gray and gothic Twilight. The night wind whipping across my face is freezing; the lifesblood has long since drained out of my face- I'm numb as a ninety-year old cock. Fall is giving way to winter, gas if four buck a gallon and I'm really starting to hate all of this running around that I've got to do. I'm not too fond of the crushers, but I'm starting to get whole new appreciation for detectives. This gathering clues thing is tedious as all hell; the gumshoes earn their paychecks.

I should really get a minion or something to take care of all of this legwork.

I get a little too deep in my navel gazing and almost miss my exit. Leaning in my seat, I cut across a lane and head up the off ramp, slipping underneath the stoplight a second before it switches from yellow to red. Safely off the motorway and back on the potholed asphalt of my grimey hometown, I slip my focus back to my bellybutton. I can admit to myself that what the perforated man at the hospital told me has me more than a little spooked; that kid was just a sap- not a danger to anybody. If his story is to be believed- and he hadn't tripped my BS detector- then the Nobodies had nearly killed him over nothing. The Nobodies _had_ killed that other kid over nothing.

And the Organization that I knew-the one that I had escaped from- they never did that.

Oh, they had no problem dishing out violence or even taking somebody off the map permanently. But it was always, _always_, controlled and directed violence. And when you killed somebody, you didn't leave bodies. You're taught to be precise; there's a certain…finesse to the whole thing. Doing things the Nobody way means you did them with a scalpel, not a shotgun. What happened at Ansem-Wise was all shotgun; sloppy, scattered and random. The whole thing just bugs me.

I bend a corner onto 17th street and spy a group of young men, hoodied up and hanging loose in front of the 12'O'clock burger and am reminded that I am back in Organization country. Frowning at the sight, I twist the throttle and speed past. I don't think that any of them spared me a second look. I hope that I don't have anyone following me; it's late.

I see the turn that will take me back to my house coming up on the right, but at the last second I choose to not take it and keep going straight. I head towards Naminé's house. For once no nasty thoughts about her pajamas pooling on the floor flitter through my mind. What I need is her brain, because I've got a handful of dots but no marker to connect them.

The liquor stores, chicken shacks and check cashing places eventually give way to blocks full of rusty chain link fences, cracked sidewalks and decaying houses with dead lawns. Puttering down a desolate block until I come to Naminé's house- a battered family home two houses down from the corner. It's one of only three houses on either side of this street that isn't boarded up or bombed out. Parking in front of the house, I hoist myself off of the back of my Vespa.

While I'd like to pull all the way into the yard, Naminé's parents don't really like me. I just have to hope that nobody comes along and decides they would like a new motor scooter.

I take the fence in a single jump and move around the side of the house to where I know Naminé's room is. I'm in luck; I can spy a faint light shining between the cracks in her curtains. Of course she's still up, the lone night owl in a family full of early risers. I get down on my knees and feel around on the ground for some pebbles or sticks or something that I can throw. Collecting a handful of refuse, I start tossing my little odds and ends up against her glass until I see the blinds open and hear that old window inch open a crack.

A soft voice calls out to me from inside of the frame.

"Roxas, is that you?"

"Yeah," I reply. "Can you come down and let me in?"

"Alright; come around to the back, but keep it down. My folks and my brother are all asleep."

Naminé closes the window while I walk around to the back steps. I spend a few minutes waiting at the back door before the tumblers start tumbling and the door squeaks open. She pokes her face out then beckons me to come inside but puts a finger up to her lips; like I need a reminder to clam up. Her mom once caught me one morning while I was trying to sneak out and beaned me with a toaster. I'm not trying to have that happen to me again.

Naminé takes my hand in hers and guides me through the house, gliding through the darkness with the surefooted grace of a housecat until we reach our destination and are safely enclosed behind the poster covered walls of her room. No sooner than I plop down at the foot of the bed, she starts in with the questions.

"So, what happened? What did the kid say?"

She's doing that thing where she bounces on the balls of her feet; I've never said this to her face, but she looks like a little kid that desperately needs to take a piss. Unable to even smile at the thought- not after the night I've had- I leak out the gory details of my trek to the right side of the tracks. I finish; she stops bouncing; she gets really quiet.

With a sigh she comes and sits down next to me on the bed. The bedsprings squeak a little bit beneath our butts as she puts her weight on the mattress.

"So…that's…_fuck_."

"Yup..."

We sit there in silence for a little while before she pushes herself off of the bed, walks the few feet to her desk and grabs a stack of loose-leaf paper that's laying there. Grabbing a pen from out of one of the desk's drawers, she waves me over to where she is. Doing as ordered, I go over and stand behind her chair so that I can have a good view of things from over her shoulder.

"So, what are we doing," I ask.

"We're going to make a list of everything we know so far. We've got to get organized if we're going to figure any of this out," Naminé replies.

"Sounds good to me," I say, though I'm starting to wonder at what point you (i.e. Roxas) became we (i.e. Roxas & Naminé).

"Cool. So, first off, there was the tainted HEARTLESS that's been floating around town causing all these people to overdose."

She writes a big red number 1 and marks off the first point.

"What's next?"

"The Organization being in Destiny I guess," I say, supplying the next point. "There's supposed to be a freeze on expansion; the Superior wants to consolidate, not add to the pot. Also, it's not just lackeys out there, but full blown Numbers running the show."

Nams nods that cute little head of hers and scribbles down what I said. As she leans over, my eyes drift down the length of her back. I imagine what kind of underwear she's sporting beneath those pajama pants. The strawberry print ones, maybe? Suddenly, another thought springs to my mind.

'_Just a few millimeters of cotton; that's all that's separating you…'_

I rip my eyes away from where they were lingering, take that thought that's in my head, pull a knife out, stab it repeatedly then douse it in kerosene and set it on fire to burn away its life and all evidence of its existence because absolutely nothing good is going to come of going down that road with Naminé. Not for me, and especially not for her.

"Well, I guess the last thing to put here would be that stuff with the stabbing, right," she asks.

"Definitely," I agree. "That fuckery has statement written all over it."

"And according to you, doing something as high-profile as an attempted double homicide in a schoolyard isn't something the Organization would usually bless."

I nod. Frankly, that whole business at Ansem-Wise still has me scratching my head because no matter how much I try to figure out the angle, I just can't see the Superior giving the thumbs up on something like that. I understand that the game is fierce and there are times when you've _got_ to drop a couple of bodies- shit, I've been there myself- but this was just half-assed. The backlash would destroy whatever benefits the killings could have provided. The crushers and citizens can ignore junkies and drug pushers, but nobody is going to ignore dead kids.

"We've got the dots. Now…how do they connect?"

Naminé is talking to herself again. Though that question is not being directed at me, I still try to apply some brain power to it. I look over the red words scrawled across the page and, at first, I come up with nothing. Then, suddenly, something clicks; pieces that were scattered start falling into place. I haven't ciphered out where one, two and three lead, but I do have a good idea about where they come from.

"I think I know what to do next," I say.

"Sooo…after, like, a minute and a half of deep thoughts you've figured out the whole conspiracy?"

I flick Nams' ear lightly; she punches me in the arm…not quite as lightly.

"Oh, I got no clue as to how any of this," I point to the paper, "is supposed to fit together, but I do see who it comes back to."

"And who's that?"

"The chef."

I spy the blank look on her face, so I explain.

"The guy whose job it is to cook the HEARTLESS."

"Wait. Are you telling me that the Organization has got _one_ guy making all the HEARTLESS that they sell."

"Hell no; that'd be stupid," I reply.

"There are about half a dozen Organization labs- at least there were around that many when I was still flagging- in and around the town. Each one has got a cook, but there's a guy over everything who's supposed to organize and oversee the operation. That's the chef. He goes around to all the labs, makes sure the mixtures are right and that everything's good to go to market before it hits the streets. At least that's what he's supposed to do anyway."

"And I take it that he's not the type of guy that's going to enjoy getting questions about whether he's been pissing in the crockpot, huh?"

Naminé sighs before leaning back in her chair. Her head thrown back, she looks up at me, a sad sort of look on her face.

"Look, I'm going to come right out and say it. Things are getting _way_ too real."

"I know, right? But I'm already in the shit; no point in turning around and legging it now."

She pushes her chair, and by extension me, away from her desk and walks back to the bed, papers clutched in hand. The look on her face is hard to read; she's not smiling but she's not frowning or looking sour about anything. I used to able to read her like she was _The Rat in Spats_ but she's gotten a much better poker face since we broke up.

"Is all the stuff that you're doing, that I know you're going to do, even worth it?"

That was a statement in the form of a question. I'm about to lie to her but then I stop, think again.

"Maybe; I don't want to wind you up or anything but there's a better than good chance that things are about to get a lot worse."

The expression on Naminé's face doesn't budge an inch. She just shakes her head at me and palms her forehead.

"Look, Roxas, things are heading to a place that I really never wanted them to go. And I think…"

Her voice trails off. She's chewing her bottom lip and her eyes are flitting around the room- she's having a hard time just spitting it out, so I do it for her.

"This is where you want to get off."

I can pretend that her words haven't hurt me. Hell, I understand where she's coming from; _I'm_ already regretting starting this whole mission in the first place. But like I said before; I'm in the shit.

"Jeez, boy, I'm not cutting you off completely, so stop looking so pathetic," Naminé snorts, exasperated.

"I'll still be here for you and stuff, but the stuff you shared with me tonight; let's never do that again. I didn't want to know what you did before, I especially don't want to know what you do now, okay?"

"Okay," I say. I'm happy and a little bit confused; she wants out, but at the same time, she _doesn't_ want out?

Birds man; I'll never get them.

I zip up my jacket and announce that I'd better be heading home. Naminé leads me back downstairs and I'm almost safely out the door when she says my name.

"Roxas."

I look down towards her; I can barely make out the feature of her face. I'm about to ask what's up when she does something I don't expect. She leans in and kisses me; I can feel her soft lips brush against mine for a second before she pulls back and the moment is gone. I'm stunned, unsure if what just happened was supposed to happen or if I just imagined that whole scene.

"Call me when you get in, okay," she says.

I pause and consider.

"Y-yeah…okay."

* * *

><p>A fresh gust of wind ruffles my hair and makes me dig my hands down deeper into the pockets of my jacket. As I straddle the seat of my Vespa and continue my futile attempts to keep warm, I scan the well-lit parking lot of the 12'O Clock Burger hoping to catch sight of Saix.<p>

After I left Naminé's house, I had every intention of going straight home, but the questions I have about the Organization, Destiny and the HEARTLESS were just weighing too heavy on my mind. Since Saix is the closest thing that I've got to a contact inside of the Organization, I gave him a ring and told him that I needed to have a face to face as soon as possible. He told me to meet him at this 12'O Clock Burger. That was around twenty minutes ago.

Lucky for me those Nobodies that were here before are gone; I wouldn't have stayed around for this long if any of those goons were still crawling around.

As I'm surveying the mostly deserted parking lot, I spy an old-model four door scraper pulling in. It goes over to the very edge of the lot and backs into a space. The lights on the car flash once…twice…three times. I swing my leg over my ride and jog over to the car and slip into the passenger's side.

I have about a second to enjoy the bliss that is central heating before I hear the ominous '_click'_ that I recognize as a hammer being cocked back. I look over to the driver's side; Saix is sitting there, his usual cold fish expression on his face, casually pointing a gun at me. I look at him, I look at the gun; I look back at him.

"Really?"

"Just being careful," he replies. "Hands out of your pockets. Put them on the dashboard, and keep them there."

I mutter a bit, but I do as I'm told.

"So, on the phone, you said you had something you wanted to talk about?"

I look down one more time to see if the gun is still pointed at my ribs. Yep, it's still there.

"I want to know where Demyx is laying his head nowadays; I want to hit him."

"And just why would you want to do that," Saix asks. I can tell by the tone of his voice that he is genuinely curious about my request.

It's not like I'm asking for a little thing. Saix, and just about everybody else in the Main XIII couldn't give a shit about Demyx's well-being. He gets high, likes to run his mouth and is more interested in partying and messing around with that damn sitar than doing his actual job. Still, the guy was a Number, and his position merited some respect.

"Haven't you been watching the news or reading the papers lately," I say.

"All the headlines say are '_Record_ _Number_ _of_ _Overdoses'_ and '_Killer_ _Drug_ _Craze'_ and stuff like that. What all that says to me is that you've got some problems with cooks in the kitchen. Either the chef is just that big of a fuck up, or it's intentional. And I know the Superior isn't dumb enough to want to poison his own customers."

The expression on the berserker's face is none too friendly. I'd feel better about striking a nerve if he wasn't still pointing a gun at me.

"You didn't answer my question," he says. "Why are you offering to fix what sounds like an Organization problem?"

Saix pauses and then that face of his goes from sour to smug.

"This isn't about that thing with Xion, is it?"

"Shut up," I snap before I know any better. A few bad memories come gnawing at the edge of my nerves but I fight them down.

"Remember, I've got my own agenda, but I've been stuck on square two for a while now; I go see Demyx, I apply a little pressure, I maybe solve problems for both of us."

Saix strokes his chin with his free hand as he is prone to do when he's thinking things over.

"Fuck it, why not," he says finally, with a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders. "It's not like he's irreplaceable. Of course, it goes without saying that if anything that you do comes back on me…"

The hulking mass in the passenger's seat leans over and presses the cold metal barrel of the pistol up to my temple. My stomach twists into knots and it's taking every ounce of self-control I've got to keep my cool. Don't give him a reason to do what he's thinking about doing.

"I get the drift," I say evenly.

Saix is kind enough to take the gun away from my head and settle back onto his own side of the car. I'm able to relax, slightly.

"Demyx has a crash pad over in Twilight Fields near Club Rockaway; he likes to collapse there after raves. It's the only house in the whole neighborhood with a purple door. Now…you got anything else you want to run by me?"

For a second, but only for a second, I consider pressing him about the Organization Numbers in Destiny.

"No, that's it."

"Then fuck off."

I swear, I've never been so happy to see a car driving away from me than when I saw Saix pulling out of the burger lot and his taillights disappearing into the darkness. I make a promise to myself to never, ever get caught alone in a tiny space with him ever again. Anyway, I was able to get what I wanted; permission to take off Demyx.

But the most interesting thing is that when I suggested the Demyx is making poison HEARTLESS, Saix sounded more intrigued than surprised.


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13**

"…_breakin' rules is really cool again…"_

**Roxas**

The busted out windows on the other side of this desolate room is letting in a gust that causes me to flip up the hood of my jacket. Tidus is kicked back in a poorly patched reclining chair, his feet up and his eyes giving me menacing looks. If he's trying to make me feel nervous, he's succeeding; there are six or seven other Abes in this house and I'm all by myself. If these guys were of a mind to do something to me, there isn't all that much that I could say about it. The only protection I've got on me is the blade strapped to my left ankle. The Abes frisked me when I showed up here, but they weren't thorough enough.

Left with the options of either examining the décor or trading sinister glares with everyone around me- small talk being out of the question- I inspect the space. There's a raggedy wooden table sitting in the bare space that, decades ago, could have been a fairly pleasant family room. Strangely, the carpet is still here. It's wine colored- I think, anyway. It's dotted with dark stains and splotches from spilled beer, blood, gobs of cum or God knows what. And they're as numerous as the stars on a clear winter's night over Twilight Town.

I don't think I've ever been so thankful for the invention of shoes as I am right now.

The walls in this place are covered from top to bottom in graffiti, but the masterpiece has got to be the burner dominating the entire wall adjacent to the ruins of a kitchen. **'Avenue** **Gang'** scrawled in big, Blackletter script across the width of the room. The Abes around me are busy doing gangster shit; rolling joints, talking shit, and playing Chicken Foot; loitering, basically.

It doesn't make much sense, but seeing that graffiti, being in this shithole of a hangout, being around these people; I'm hit by a sense of nostalgia. What I'm in right now is a callback to the time before I dropped my flag and went my own way; when I was still one of the Organization and I would just kick it with other Nobodies in traps a lot like this one. I miss it; despite all of the lies and the bullshit that goes along with this type of lifestyle, there are parts of it that I do miss.

I take out my phone and check the time; it's getting pretty late in the day.

"Yo, what's taking him so long," I grumble to Tidus.

"He'll be out when he's out," Tidus grumbles back.

His tone warns me clam up and not bother him with any more questions. I swallow my indignation and wait. Tidus' answer doesn't make me happy, but I keep my displeasure to myself. The vibe in this room seems relaxed enough, but there's a definite tension in the air. None have forgotten the interloper in their midst and nobody wants him here. I step even a little bit out of line and these guys could kill me.

The muscled thug in the reclining chair keeps a pair of cold eyes focused on me; this guy's whole attitude is really starting to piss me off. Exactly how dangerous does he think I am? I'm in the heart of _their_ territory, _by myself_! I don't have anybody that I can call for backup; what, does he think that I just pull a whole arsenal out of my ass and gun everybody down?

Fortunately for me, whatever powers control the heavens decided that now was the time for Wakka to make his appearance. Stomping down from upstairs the bare chested- as cold as it is, he takes his shirt off- shot caller was cradling a mewling little mini-Wakka in his arms. Unlike it's father, the little one is sensibly cocooned in a hat and full body snuggy. I rise to my feet.

"How you doing," I say.

"I'm aight. Sorry for takin' so long, but I got lil' bits today so my hands been kind of full. You know how it be, eh?"

Wakka bugs out his eyes and makes what I think is a pretty grotesque face down at the baby; the kids just giggles like it's the funniest thing in the world. The father smiles brightly before directing his gaze towards me.

"My boys tell me that you're here to talk Nobody business, yeah? Let's head out back."

The main shot-caller on the Avenue turns and leads me out the door to the back porch. The springs in Tidus' chair squeak as he lifts his bulk off of the cushion and shadows me. Once we're out in the chill, I'm invited to have a seat in one of the yellow plastic deck chairs out there. When the three of us are more or less settled down, the attention turns to me.

"So…what you want Roxas," Wakka asks.

"I wanna pull a caper and I want some muscle to help get it done," I say.

"So, what? The Abes are just your dumb muscle now," Tidus spits.

"I ain't trying to offend," I reply. "But, I need some doors knocked down and your crew are the only people I know in this town who aren't too afraid to hit the Organization."

Waka gives me the suspicious stare-down, like I'm a perp and he's a crusher in one of those old-timey law and order flicks. Trying to get a sniff of a lie; trying to get a look at my angle.

"You chattin' about hittin the Nobodies like it's some little thing, ya? But you ain't sayin' anything about a who or a what just yet."

He's starting to sound interested; that's a good sign.

"Trust, this is going to be a fat one," I reply.

"It's the Organization's main HEARTLESS man, a little rat-fuck named Demyx. I got a line on where he rests at. If we knock him off I figure we can take his stash and whatever heavy cash he's got at hand."

I watch as Wakka and Tidus exchange a look. The right-hand man looks silently thoughtful but the guy I need to convince, the boss, is rocking his baby back and forth with a scowl on his face.

"I know this comes down to that personal shit you got with the Nobodies," Wakka says.

"But what's between you and them, should stay between you and them, ya? What, you wanna tear the whole town up with this? How does me sayin' yes to this help the fam?"

"Look, '_the fam'_ can keep the cash, you can keep the food, you can keep the fucking pots and pyrex for all I care. All I really care about is getting some alone time with my boy Demyx; later for all the rest of that bullshit."

"Yeah, cause the bullshit is for us to handle, ya?"

Wakka's starting to sound angry now. Something tells me I've got to do something to salvage this situation.

"I'm not trying to cause problems for the Abes," I say. "I'm bringing you an opportunity to screw over the Nobodies and get a bit of your name back."

"Nah, you're sayin you wanna bring out a war and the Avenue gonna be the only one fighting. Fuck that, ya?"

Tidus leans over and says something in his boss' ear. I hope he's urging the big ox to take the deal; Wakka hasn't been as keen on this scheme as I had first hoped. I need this to come off; if the Abes punk out on me then I will well and truly be up shit creek. The prospect of ready cash was enough of an enticement to turn Tidus' head, Wakka disappoints me. Despite his sidekick's pleas, the shot-caller just shakes his head, flashes a goofy half-smile and rises up from his seat.

"We're done," he announces. "It's getting round the time to put lil' bits down for his nap; you know what's good for you, Roxas, you won't be here when I come back."

"If I was you, I'd take this opportunity," I say at that wide, retreating back.

"You ain't me, are you? You know your way out."

I'm being petulant, I know. But by saying no, this guy is ruining my plans. Wakka walks back into the house and I'm left fuming in my seat. This was a complete fucking waste of time! I shove myself out of my chair just as Tidus rises with me.

"I'll walk you out," he says.

"Don't bother," I snap back. "I made a mistake thinking the Abes had any balls left. I should've known you guys would pussy out."

I should really watch my mouth in this situation but I'm really too heated to mind my words at this point. Somebody just kicked my sandcastle over and picking a fight is the least of my concerns. I glare at Tidus, expecting him to get mad; silently daring him to try something. Instead, he surprises me.

"Let's take a walk," he says.

The tone of his voice lacks its usual hostility. I say "_yeah_, _okay_" and wonder exactly where his thoughts are leading. We step off the porch and into the back yard before walking around front. Coming to the sidewalk, I look down the block at the long string of boarded up family homes. We get a fair distance away from the house when Tidus offers me a cigarette and a light; I take them.

I'm a few good puffs in when Tidus finally gets down to business.

"So…how much food does this Demyx guy keep in the spot with him," he asks me.

"Knowing him, way more than he's supposed to. And if you squeeze him a little bit, he'll probably tell you where more is at. But then, I thought you guys weren't into drugs."

Tidus just shrugs his shoulders.

"What can I say; thing change."

"Yeah, like…leadership, for instance."

"The hell's that supposed to mean."

"Oh, come on, do I look like chump to you," I say.

"Talking to me like this, out where nobody can hear us? And when you asked about Demyx, it was after the food, not the cash. You're obviously going behind Wakka's back because we both know he wouldn't touch drugs. You're trying to be the new king."

"Wakka's my boy," Tidus says through gritted teeth; he sounds insulted. "I'm not out to snatch nobody's crown, but shit can't keep going the way its been going. The Avenue stays losing- ground _and_ respect and it doesn't help that our boss has got his mind on other things."

I recall the baby. I can guess what those "other things" might be. I run my fingers through my hair and sigh in exasperation. This isn't the kind of outcome that I was expecting but at the upside is that I know Tidus and I at least have a tacit understanding.

"Look, I'm not exactly in a position to say no to any help you might want to give me. But if this power play of yours doesn't come off, I could have both the Abes and the Organization on my ass. That's something I'd like to avoid, if possible."

Tidus gives me a serious look.

"You think I'm the only one that's been getting ideas? My whole set has become professionals in getting our asses kicked; we need to get our own back, you get me?"

I get him, all right. Money is power and drugs bring money; you do the fucking math. Being the friendly neighborhood gangbangers have turned the Abes into a joke; they take Demyx's food and his cash, and they'll probably have enough capital to start up their own drug operation. Shit.

This isn't right.

"So, when are you trying to do this," Tidus asks me.

I help them do this, and I'm effectively creating a brand new dope ring; the last thing this town needs is another one of those. There's going to be new addicts; there's going to be turf wars; there's going to be overdoses and some of that blood's going to be on my hands. Seriously what the fuck am I doing? I'm really on the verge of telling Tidus to just forget it; forget I said anything about anything and just let me get back to my side of town.

But, as I'm about to take that last step back to the light side, I find that I can't get out those words.

"Give me a few days to set the table," is all I say. "Let me have your number and I'll hit you up with some more details, later."

A dap and a pound later, I'm gone.

* * *

><p><strong>Sora<strong>

I'm not a nosy person by nature.

I'm the type of guy that's pretty much apathetic to anything and everything that doesn't affect me personally. I don't get into anybody else's business because I wouldn't want anybody sticking their big nose into mine; y'know, what with karma and all that.

No, I'm not a nosy person. But as I stand here in the compressed anarchy of a school hallway right after the last bell has sounded, I find myself filled with the feeling that I need to start getting at least a little bit nosy. The main source of my discomfort- a tall, athletic student sporting flamboyantly faggy pink hair- is hanging around down near the exit doors at the end of the hallway. Marluxia hasn't been here all that long but he's already become something of a big man on campus around here.

The frown on my face gets a little deeper as I notice that besides Lexaeus, Zexion and the minor minions, Yuffie is also over there with them.

"You mad bro?"

I jump in surprise and turn towards the sound of phantom voice. Riku is looking at me with a half-amused look on his face.

"What are you talking about," I reply, turning my attention back to Pinky and his clique.

"Dude, you look like you've been gargling hot diarrhea. I've got to say, I never expected you to get so butthurt over sloppy seconds."

"You think I'm upset over _Yuffie_?"

"Bro, chicks are the only thing I've ever known you to get upset over. If it's not about her, why are you shooting death glares Lux and his crew?"

I quirk an eyebrow at my best friend; just when did he start referring to Marluxia as _Lux_?

"I'm just not too sure about any of those guys. They're not like the other punks or delinquents around here; they're…I don't know."

Actually, I do. Those new guys give me the willies exact same way my brother used to. Due to that shit with our dad, we didn't see a whole lot of each other growing up but mom always talked about how bad a kid he was. Not that I'd ever admit this to anyone, but those times when we were around each other, Roxas frightened me. And my instincts were right; Roxas is a thug. So what does that say about Marluxia and his bunch?

"Bro, you don't even know them."

"And I don't want to know them."

"Sora, come on," Riku says, giving me a serious look. "I admit, when they first got here they gave me a pretty wicked vibe, but they're really alright. Those guys are new here. It can't be easy coming to Destiny from a place like Twilight Town; you should try to make friends with them."

"...Didn't know they were from Twilight Town," I mutter to myself.

Riku doesn't seem to hear me; he just gives me a final goodbye and goes off on his way. The hallway is starting to clear out; I'd better leave too. I start for the exits, not the one where Marluxia and the rest are still holding court- I go the opposite way. Then, an idea strikes me. I pull out my phone and point it towards the group at the far end of the hall. The shutter effect goes _click_ as I snap a quick picture, catching pinky and his largest goon in the photo.

I stuff my phone back in my pocket. I've made up my mind. I don't know a thing about these guys, but maybe my brother does.

* * *

><p><strong>Roxas<strong>

The soft buzz of electric clippers hum all around the room. In the background, an energetic old school rock n' roll jam by the Philly Phantom and the Blots sets the scene in the barbershop. I shift uncomfortably in one of the red plastic chairs that lined the front of the stop. I can practically feel the orange glow of the street light outside across my back; a couple of old men are getting haircuts, a pair in the corner seem to be just hanging out, playing chess. I'm the youngest person in the room by about three decades; nobody takes much notice of me.

Easing back into the chair, I focus on the man I came here to see; Xigbar Braig. He's manning the chair at the very back. He's got a straight razor held to the neck of the customer in his chair, carefully drawing the blade across the skin to deliver his signature close shave. Seeing him there, in his red pinstriped smock and sensible shoes, he looks like the picture of old-timey wholesomeness. From the neck down anyway. The jagged scar running down the left side of his face and the black patch covering his right eye suggested a person who had done some questionable things in his past.

I've never gotten a cut from Xigbar, but he must be pretty good considering he's got customers despite having only one eye.

He finishes the shave and collects his fee. Then, he raises two fingers in my direction and beckons me to come to his chair. When I get close enough, I offer a hand which he takes and shakes warmly.

"How've you been Xigbar?"

"Alright; just came back from up north," he replies, his northern accent twisting the last words into '_ahp_ _noorf'_. "Have a seat."

"I didn't exactly come here for a haircut y'know," I say.

"Maybe not, but you're in need of one. Now, be a good lad; sit."

There's a smile on his face and a laugh in his throat, but I recognize an order when I hear one. I sit and soon find the barber bib thrown over me and fastened around my neck. He places his hands on my head, turning my skull this way and that, examining. After a moment of quiet contemplation, he removes some scissors from the jar of disinfectant sitting on the counter.

"So, what'll it be?"

"I-I dunno; just make it look neat, I guess. And don't take too much off, okay?"

Xigbar scoffs and I hear the faint '_click, click, click'_ of the scissors.

"I'd ask why you came to see me," the barber says. "But there's really only one reason any of you young people ever come to see me, innit?"

"You sure it's safe to talk here," I ask, straying my eyes around the room to the other old timers occupying the scenery.

"Don't be so suspicious, pickney, there's none but standup men in my place."

"Right…so, yeah. I need some shooters."

"Course you do," Xigbar says. Weird…he sounds kind of disappointed.

"You know, you Organization kids are really something; building what you built out of nothing. In my day gangs were just packs of punk kids knocking over old ladies and breaking windows. You'd do it until you were old enough to join a real crew. You know what the problem with your generation is Roxas?"

"We've only got _one_ problem?"

He laughs.

"There's no proper villains anymore; they're all either dead or banged up or retired. There's no respect out there nowadays. The robbers and the badmen died out and the druggie Organization took their place."

"Maybe you haven't heard, but I haven't been cliqued up with the Organization for a minute," I say to Xigbar.

The chair spins around and I'm suddenly given a fly's eye view of the barber's pinstriped torso.

"Oh, I've heard; and that knowledge saddens me. It really and truly does."

"Why?"

Xigbar scoffs, still full of good humor.

"Because I was rooting for you kids! I liked how you thought big; you took over the whole town with pocketful of pills. When I was your age, I was still getting done for purse snatching."

He grabs the clippers and leans my head forward.

"Look, Xigbar, not that I don't enjoy the sound of your voice but when the fuck are we gonna get down to business?"

"_Heh, heh_. Alright then, let me put a point on it," he says while drawing the clippers against the scruff of my neck.

"You want guns. I sell guns. Now, due to past services rendered, I'm willing to supply you with what you want. But before I do, I want to ask you something."

"…And what's that," I say warily.

"Do you really want to really want to do whatever it is you're planning to do?"

"The hell kind of question is that?"

Xigbar spins me around in the chair again. The one eyed barber grabs the scissors and a comb and starts in on the front of my head.

"You're out, pickney. Your break might not have been the cleanest, but you got away from this life. But now you come wanting shooters. When the bang-bangs come out, somebody likely to die…you ready for that? Cause if you're not, you'll need to…"

"What I _need_," I say, breaking in, "is to put a couple extra holes in some faggot's skull. Can you help with that or not?"

I know Xigbar likes to wax poetic, but he's really starting to get on my fucking nerves. I need somebody to put some cold steel in my hand, pat me on the back and not ask questions; the very last thing I need is somebody trying to talk me out of it.

"Alright, alright, I get it. I'll set you straight soon as I finish this."

Xigbar gives me a final spin in the chair and a snip from the scissors.

"All done; what do you think?"

He holds a mirror up to my face. I'm surprised…I look pretty damn good.


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter 14**

'…_ain't seen a high this good since sellin' crack been legal…'_

**Roxas**

The White Spot Diner is a quaint- and by quaint, I mean shoebox sized- little greasy spoon situated a couple of blocks away from my brother's apartment. Give the menu a once-over and you find out awfully quick that this isn't a joint that does fine dining. It is, however, one of the few things besides legs that stays open after midnight on this side of town. Plus, I'm the type of boy that likes a bit of grease and gristle in his food.

I gave Tidus a ring a while back; he's supposed to be coming to pick me up after a while. Tonight's _the_ night.

It's been about a week since Wakka rebuffed my offer of friendship and Tidus decided that he had had enough of his gang playing whipping boy to the Organization. Both of us have been busy- while I was off calling in favors to collect the artillery, he had been casing the house that Saix had identified as Demyx's crash pad. I was just sitting up watching TV and wondering if I should risk calling Naminé when I got the call that I've been both wanting and dreading.

Mechanically, I dip my spoon into the mushy pile of odds and ends heaped atop a periwinkle colored plate. A White Spot Diner delicacy, the Hell-of-a-Mess is a mixed up mass of grits, pork sausage, eggs, mushroom gravy and pure awesome, and there's a lot of it. Lesser men and their pathetic constitutions would quake and turn up their noses in disdain at the very sight of such a meal. Roxas, however, is no lesser man and his mighty iron gullet can withstand even the most lard-soaked of culinary presentations!

I'm having a pretty good time stuffing my face and talking to myself when my phone rings, snapping me all the way back to reality. I pull the cell out of my pocket and suppress the belch rising up my throat before I say,

"Yo."

"I'm parked in the lot across the way," Tidus' terse voice says from the other end of the line. "You got the party favors?"

My eyes slide down towards the old overnight bag sitting next to my right shoe.

"Yeah, I got'em," I reply. "I'm eating right now, but I'll be out in a second."

"Just hurry up, huh? We don't have all night."

The line goes dead.

'_Pfft. Prick_.'

I'm tempted to just take my time and let Tidus wait…but, that wouldn't exactly be the best way to start off the night. Sighing heavily, I stash my phone back in my pocket and wolf down what's left of my meal. I pass some cash over the counter to pay for the check, leave a few bits for a tip and am out the door, my bag slung across my shoulder. A gust of night air slaps me full in the face. Zipping up my jacket against the chill, I quickly scurry across the lonely street towards the lot.

When I get there, I spy an old model four door squatting underneath a streetlight, bathed in the electric blue glow. The headlights on the car flash; I walk around to the passenger's side and hop in. Tidus gives me a gruff nod in lieu of a proper greeting; I take a quick look in the backseat but there's nobody there.

"It's just you?"

"I got my people watching the spot," the Abe replies. "More importantly, you ready to do this?"

"You actually think that I'd pussy out _now_? You must be forgetting whose idea this was."

"I was only asking," Tidus says evenly before whipping out his phone. He turns his head to me.

"Let me see the ratchets."

Wordlessly, I unzip the top of my bag and hold the top open so that the Abe can get a look at tonight's arsenal.

"That ain't much. You couldn't have gotten anything else," he asks.

"What do you want, a surface to air missile," I snap back. "I had to go through a lot of trouble to get these; favors had to be cashed in."

"Again, I was only asking," Tidus says; he's giving me an odd look, like he's not too sure about me at the moment.

I'm kicking myself for my momentary outburst; yeah, so I'm a bit more nervous than I first realized. Anybody with a brain would be. Across from me, Tidus has finished dialing up whoever it is he has watching Demyx's house.

"Hey," he says into the receiver.

"Yeah, I got the guy. Yeah…yeah, he's got the ratchets, don't worry. What about the mark? Oh, really…yeah, that's cool. We're getting on the road now; you girls sit tight, we'll see you when we get there."

Taking the phone from his ear, Tidus turns the motor over and pretty soon we're pulling out of the lot and heading towards Twilight Fields.

"Did I hear you right, just now? You got chicks as our backup," I ask my driver.

The big Abe behind the wheel just laughs at me.

"You only sound like that cause you've never seen those birds fight. Trust me, they don't mind if it gets wet."

My mind flashes back to Larxene and chill that inevitably goes up my spine reminds me of the viciousness of the fairer sex.

"So…this Demyx guy is camped out pretty far from Nobody county," Tidus says after a while.

I'm surprised he's making small talk.

"Yeah, well, he's always been fucking imbecile; the Fields are close to the clubs he likes to go to and he probably figures all he has to do is say he's with the Organization and people won't try to test him."

"Way you talk about this mark, seems like you to go way back."

"I didn't really have a choice," I scoff. "We're cousins."

"Hold up," Tidus says, a bemused tone to his usually gruff voice, "you planned a lick on your own family? That's kinda messed up."

"Okay, before you start getting any ideas in your head, stop," I say.

"First; my mom and his mom are cousins, so that _just barely_ makes me and Demyx family. Second, our moms fell out years ago, so it's not like we're even that close. In fact, I didn't even know he was with the Organization until after I joined. And third, if that guy was lying at my feet, wreathed in flames, I wouldn't piss on him to put him out."

"So, what'd this guy do to get you to hate him so much?"

I peer out the window and count the little pools of electric light that we pass.

"What makes you think I hate him?"

Now it's Tidus' turn to scoff. "Our whole time with this caper, you always refer to dude as some variation of '_bitch'_, '_bastard'_ or '_motherfucker'_, that's why."

Should I really be telling this story? Ah whatever, it's not like it's going to hurt anything.

"I used to know this girl, right? She was…beautiful, y'know; radiant. But, she had problems. Basically, she didn't have a family or, really, anybody in the whole world who gave a damn about her besides the Organization. Too bad the Organization is a pretty poor substitute for a family."

"So, what, you were fuckin' her or something?"

"No way, it wasn't like that," I respond quickly.

"With me and her, it was more like we was brother and sister; she was one of the original Nobodies and she was the one that backed me when I first got down. This girl wasn't no bitch, but like I said, she had her problems. In the end that stuff was just too big for her to handle, I guess. And Demyx…he just saw what she was going through and…took advantage."

The insides of the car feel oddly cramped at the moment; recalling all of this stuff is getting me antsy.

"Young girl with issues meets a charismatic guy who plays guitar and has access to an unlimited supply of good drugs. You can probably guess where all this went."

Across from me, Tidus falls silent. I'm just waiting for the inevitable final question.

"So, what ended up happening to old girl?"

"…State Hospital," I say bluntly.

He goes all quiet again; that suits me just fine. Thankfully, Tidus catches the change in the atmosphere and decides not to press the issue. The remainder of our journey passes in relative silence as we cruise the avenues up to the near North Side. We're puttering down a dark street flanked on both sides by squat, ranch-style houses with rusting chain link fences when Tidus pulls over and shuts the engine off.

"Here's where we get out," he says. "The fam is waiting for us in a van a couple of blocks up and over."

Hefting my bag, I follow my ride's lead and exit the car, heading up the street. We're walking for a couple of minutes beneath the irregularly spaced street lights when Tidus taps me on my shoulder and points down the block to what I can only describe as a stereotypical rape van sitting in front of burned out house.

"That'll be them," the Abe says.

I follow behind as he goes up to the passenger's side door and knocks on the window. As it rolls down, I'm able to spy a set of surprisingly attractive females sitting in the seats.

"Paine, Yuna, this is Roxas."

"What's going on," I say.

The girls give me blank, icy looks as their means of acknowledging my presence. Okay then…

"The back's open; hop in before one of the nosy neighbors calls the crushers on us," the bird behind the wheel says.

Police? In this neighborhood? Not likely; still, we do as we're told. Once we're safely inside the van, Tidus and I creep towards the front seats. As we move, my foot hits something. I look down and see a sledgehammer; lying next to that is a machete. Looking back up, I peer out of the windscreen towards the house we're going to hit. I see light on in the front room.

"Somebody's still in there?"

"Just one guy," the bird in the passenger side, Yuna, says.

"Where's Rikku at," Tidus asks.

"The mark was here earlier," the Paine chick says. "He had a pair of monkeymen with him when he showed up and as far as I could see they were his only protection. Only two guys rolled out to the club, the other one stayed behind at the house. We had Rikku follow the two that left and we've been sitting on that guy in there. Rikku's supposed to bell us if the mark does anything unexpected."

"I got out and checked around the house," Yuna said.

"I peeked in some windows and listened out; that one guy that didn't go looks like the only one in there. Plus, the spot's only got two ways in; the front door and the back door. We cover them both, nobody's getting away."

All eyes suddenly turn to me.

"You got something for us, right," Yuna says.

"Of course," I reply. I turn and grab my bag, opening it up to extract the tools.

"I got us four pistols. There're two nines, a .380 and a .45."

"What the hell man, these are fucking antiques," Paine grumbles in displeasure.

"They're a little old but they all work," I assure her.

"But, knowing who I got these from, it's a safe bet that there's some bodies on these ratchets already so after all is said and squared you're going to want to toss these down a sewer somewhere. They all got safety's so make sure that those are off before we go in. Oh, and everybody's only got one clip, so don't go dumping it all in the first guy you see, alright?"

Yuna looks disgusted. "Only one clip? You ain't exactly giving us a lot to work with here."

"These bitches are all spitting Black Talons so one shot is all you're gonna need to knock somebody on their ass," I quip back.

I have no idea what I'm talking about. I'm just repeating stuff that Xigbar told me about the guns and the ammo. Honestly, I don't know much about guns or how you're supposed to use them beyond the point and squeeze. Giving the looks on everybody's faces, I must sound like I know what I'm talking about.

"Leave it for now," Tidus says.

"You girls got the stuff like I asked?"

Yuna shifts in her seat and pulls up a large black book-bag from the leg space beneath her legs.

"What's in there," I ask. The girl Abe give a smug grin.

"Ski masks, latex gloves, and duct tape. Everything a proper thugs needs for a robbery."

I nod my head in approval. Yeah, this is nice; we've got it all set up. Now comes the part that sucks- the waiting.

* * *

><p>I'm dreaming about Naminé in something red and slutty when I find myself shaken awake by a rough pair of hands. Blinking the muzzy feeling out of my head, I look up and see Tidus' hulking form and a smaller, svelte figure leering over my body.<p>

"Demyx and his man are back; it's time to get ready."

I sit up and crack my back before grabbing my bag. Unzipping it, I distribute the goodies and everybody in the back tools up.

"How long have they been at the house," I ask.

"About fifteen minutes," Paine says as she pulls on a pair of gloves.

"We were giving ourselves some time for Rikku to get here. Once she links up with us, it'll be time to rock and roll."

"What's taking her so long?"

"Give her a break, huh? She's on a moped, those things don't go all that fast."

No sooner had the words left her mouth, then there was a knock on the van's back door. Everybody freezes; I grab one of the guns while Tidus inches forward and pushes the door open. Standing there, I see a short girl with long blonde hair tied loosely on top of her head.

"Dude, chill, it's me."

"Damn girl, it took you long enough to get here," the big Abe says.

"Whatever. Just give me a hand with this."

Between the two of them, the pair manhandle a moped into the back of the van. Once that's over with the new girl looks me up and down, sucking her teeth.

"So…you're the guy?"

I shrug. "Uh…yeah. I guess I'm the guy."

"Awesome. Let's go rob some people."

Paine passes out the masks and gloves to me, Tidus, and Rikku; Yuna stays behind the wheel so I take that to mean that she's going to serve as the getaway driver. Tidus grabs the sledgehammer while Paine puts on the book bag and hefts the machete. I was wondering who was going to take that. We all exchange a silent glance; it's going to be now or it's going to be never.

Baling out of the van, our little group quickly walks across the street towards Demyx's house. My heart is pounding out of my chest, like any second I'm going to hear my sternum cracking from the inside out. A disgusting hodg-podge of nervousness and fear and excitement is just bubbling around in my guts. The weight of the gun in my hand is unsettlingly comforting and in despite my nervousness not a single bead of sweat is forming on my brow.

Me, Tidus and Paine set ourselves up by the front door while Rikku goes around covering the back door. I can hear the muffled sound of a conversation coming from the living room as Tidus grips the sledgehammer in his meathooks and raises it up to his shoulders. He takes a slow, experimental swing towards the door to steady himself and get the placing just right; I swear I can see the ox's muscles coiling up beneath his clothes as he gathers strength and smashes the hammer into the door.

'_BANG!'_

Our boy gets it on the first swing.

The door flies open under the weight of one solid strike and while I'm still stuck in place, Paine is the first one to rush through the opening. I'm a split second behind her; my blood is rushing to my head as the adrenaline high burns away my nervousness. Demyx's two monkeymen are splayed out on the couch. As I come over the threshold the one with the shaved head drops the game controller in his hands and springs to his feet.

It looks like he's going for something on the side of the couch, but Paine is across the room in a flash. I watch the machete arcing through the air and embedding itself in his shoulder. The Nobody screams like a newborn that's just gotten it's ass slapped and the angry bird shouts at him to shut the fuck up. Tidus has dropped the hammer and pulled his tool out. He sticks the barrel in the other Nobody's face and growls…

"_Where's Demyx?"_

The kid points a shaky finger down the hallway and I'm off down it. Heart jumping up my throat, I come to the first door in the corridor and put my foot through it; _shit_! Bathroom; move on to the next one further down. I do the same thing; this time I hit paydirt.

As the door flies open and smacks the wall with a thud, I go in gun first. A shrill scream rattles off the walls and startles me so much I squeeze the trigger on the pistol out of reflex.

'_POW!'_

My ears are ringing, but I can still hear the sounds of shots going off in the front room and my stomach turns as I realize that everything has just gone pear shaped. It's dark, so my free hand blindly gropes the wall until it finds the light switch. I can't panic; I've got to see my way through this. As the room is thrown into illumination I spy some little brown-skinned club cutie wrapped up in bedsheets, screaming like its bloody murder. It takes me a second to find Demyx and when I finally lay my eyes on his bare, bony ass, its looks like he's trying to pull something out of the closet. I jump across the bed, grab a fistful of his hair and yank as hard as I can. Once I've got him good and yolked, I stick the barrel of my ratchet up his snout- give him a good sniff of the gunpowder- and let him know what time it is.

"Move and _I will blow your fucking head off!"_

The adrenaline high has me buzzing like I slammed three espressos; in fact, the only thing blowing it is this chick in the bed who won't stop screaming. I can't have her shrieking and carrying on like that. People in this area may be slow to call the cops, but somebody is bound to start dialing if they hear what sounds like scenes from a horror movie coming from this house. Letting go of Demyx's head, I ball up my spare hand and do my best to knock that bitch's teeth down her throat.

I throw some real weight behind the punch and as I see her head snap back, I feel something in my hand give in.

"You fuckin' cunt," I hiss venomously as pain blossoms in my poor knuckles and shoots up into my wrist.

She doesn't say anything, she just holds her face and sobs, trying to keep the blood from streaming between her fingers. Dumb bitch deserves it…she should've just acted smart and shut up.

I quickly move my gun back towards Demyx; if our situations had been reversed, I would have tried to make a move, but him? He's just got his hands above his head and a neutral look on his face; he's no hot head, he knows better than to mess with the man with the gun. I hear footsteps coming from out in the hall and a second later Rikku's tiny form barges through the door, followed closely by Tidus.

"Dude, what the fuck just happened," the Rikku exclaims.

"Later for that," I snap. "We got him!"

Demyx is still eyeballing us with that dead fish look on his face.

"You cocksuckers are really doing this? Do you know who I am? Do you stupid fucks realize what you just did to yourselves," he says.

He's got some balls, making threats and acting like he's the one in charge of the situation. Rikku rushes over and cracks him across the face with the butt of her gun. When he's down on floor, the little bird puts the ratchet to his bleeding lips, gully style, and says…

"Do we look concerned to you?"

"Enough," Tidus raps. "We ain't got all night. Where's the fucking dosh? And don't try to lie to us, we know you got something!"

Demyx looks like he wants to resist but, fortunately for him, good sense wins out over gangster machismo.

"There's a safe in the closet. The combination is 04-21-07, alright?"

I hurry over to the closet. Over my shoulder I hear Tidus shouting for Paine to get in here. Moving quickly, I turn the knob on the front of the safe and enter the sequence of numbers. Pulling the door open reveals a large brown paper bag and a couple of freezer baggies filled up with purple pills. A quick peek into the brown bag reveals it's filled with cash. I put toss the pills in the brown bag and turn back to the rest of the group. Paine's got the club cutie down with duct tape over her mouth and wrists. I find Demyx's clothes on the floor and toss them to him.

"Put those on," I order.

"C'mon, I gave you what you wanted!"

"That's cute."

He glares at me. There's a searching look in his eye; shit, did he recognize my voice? I can't have him saying my name with the girl in the room.

"You got ten seconds to cover your ass, or I start shooting things off," I growl.

"Alright, alright, just…fuck!"

After he covers his shame, we frog march Demyx out of the room; we leave the jump-off taped up on the floor. As we're hustling through the living room, I get a brief glimpse of the mess that Tidus and Paine made in there.

"_Fuck_. Did you have to do'em both," I ask once we're outside.

"We heard a shot, they came at us," Paine says matter-of-factly. "Don't go bitching out on us."

We get to the van; Yuna's got the engine running.

"Where are we going? C'mon, where are you taking me?"

Demyx is asking questions; his arrogance is melting and he's finally starting to sound nervous.

"Wherever the hell we want to," Tidus says.

He opens up the van.

"Now get in."


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter 15**

'…_but I don't share my brother's pain…'_

**Roxas**

If there's still a chill in the night air, I don't feel it. My blood is boiling underneath my skin; I feel like my whole body is in a damn microwave. I'm still all the way amped from what I was just a party to not twenty minutes before.

"This is so fucked up," I say, more to myself than to the muscle-bound kid sharing the doorway with me.

"What're you going to do about it," Tidus replies flippantly, giving a callous shrug.

The two of us are standing just outside one of the many dilapidated storefronts that line Marqee Ave., just a short jump from the neighborhood where we snatched Demyx. Back in our grandparent's times, this used to be one of the town's main drags but nowadays it's just as broken down and neglected as everything else in this damn city. I stare far down the street towards a lone bus stop standing forlorn against the darkness, it's weak lights one of the few things bringing illumination to this dead stretch of concrete.

Formerly an electrician's shop, our current location is now serving as a temporary holding pen.

"Can't you at least _pretend_ to be a _little bit concerned_ about this," I spit back.

I want to say this is all wrong. Two bodies; two goddamn bodies.

That's taking things to a level that I never wanted to go to. But what am I going to say? There's nothing that can be done for it; there's no reset button to this shit. You go into a place like that, strapped up like we were, it's not weird that somebody gets killed. I knew that the entire time.

Man, y'know what? Fuck that! Knowing something _may_ happen and having it _actually_ happen are two different things.

"You shitting yourself isn't going to solve anything Roxas. Just focus on what went right instead of what went wrong; we got the _mark_, we got the _dash_, we got the _food_. Now we've got to move on to the next step. Leave all that past tense shit where it belongs."

I just stare at Tidus; every light around here is broken, so I can barely make him out an yet at the same time I can see him clearly. In fact it's like I'm really seeing this guy for the first time. How can this not be affecting him? He murdered…shit, _we_ murdered, two people less than half an hour ago and its like he's already forgotten about it; just like it didn't matter. Even at my worst, I was never that cold; at least, I don't think that I was.

"Look, we need him to start jawing, with the quickness," Tidus says. "We're going to be needing to wrap this shit up in the next few hours before the Nobodies catch word of what happened and go on high alert."

No concern about the police Tidus? The crushers aren't that incompetent.

"What do you care about that," I say. "You already got the stuff you wanted to get. I'm the only one that needs to have words with Demyx."

Tidus just scoffs, like he's amused by my naiveté. "If this clown was keeping that much shit _in his house_, he's got to have more somewhere else, right?"

I can see where this is going. I can see the wheels turning inside that prick's wooly head; it's the reasoning of a predator, a shark that just got a good whiff of fresh blood. My unease about this whole situation ratchets up a few notches.

I make up my mind that I'm going to get what I need from Demyx as quickly as possible, and then I'm getting out of here.

"I'm taking first run at him," I say.

"And who says you get to decide that?"

"I do; right now. I'm the one who set this caper up, it's the least I'm due."

Besides, if I let you animals get him first, he might not be in any condition to talk. That'd be a whole night wasted.

Tidus gives me a cold look but eventually brushes off my defiance and agrees to my demand. I hide how relieved I am that he didn't make a big thing out of this. Silently we enter the premises and head to the workshop in the back of the store. A pair of electric lanterns throws a small amount of light around the room; I can barely make out the girls as they stay hugged up close to the walls. Sitting in a chair, gag in his mouth, hands bound to the arms of his seat and his face staring down into his lap is the man of the moment. I look sideways at Tidus.

"Can we get a little privacy, please?"

"…Just remember that you're on the clock," Tidus replies. "Alright ladies, let's leave'em to it."

As the Abes file out of the room, Demyx's head rises. Our eyes meet. The cold look of recognition, followed by realization that runs across his face is fucking choice, if I do say so myself. Yeah, that's right you slimy motherfucker, _it's_ _me_.

I walk around behind him and undo the gag that they had been using to keep him muzzled. Demyx makes a sound of disgust when his mouth is finally free and spits on the floor. Once he's gotten the taste of oily rag off his tongue, the Nobody nation's number one cook glares up at me.

"You lousy piece of shit," he growls. "You're going to do this to me! Your own family?"

"Family is somebody you care about," I reply. "You're just some guy I've got the bad luck of sharing a couple of gene's with, that's all."

"Yeah, go ahead. You always liked to pretend that you were better than me. Like you're some kind of upright fucking citizen, Roxas! You might've dropped your flag, but you're still the same piece of shit you always were; that's never gonna change."

Demyx shifts uncomfortably in his chair; he struggles with the restraints for a moment, but then gives up, a look of disgust running across his haggard features.

"You decide to crawl up out of whatever rock you've been squatting under just to come and fuck with me," he spits.

I dig my hands in my pockets and shrug. "Nothing like that; I just needed to have talk with you is all."

"Fuck you!"

"I'm serious," I snap back.

I get that Demyx won't be inclined to talk to me so soon after two of his boys got whetted up just an hour ago but I haven't got the time or the patience to make him feel comfortable. I open my mouth to say something, then close it. Then I open it up again to belch out the beginnings of a word before halting in frustration. Fuckin' hell; I've finally got somebody who probably knows something about what's going down with the Organization and I can't think of what to ask him first.

"You're looking kinda nervous there cuz. What's the buzz; you on the pipe or something," Demyx asks.

"I just say no to drugs," I say. "And you may not believe me, but you want to tell me what I want to know, because I'm the only guy around who gives a damn about you."

"Really? You've got a pretty shitty way of showing it."

"…Okay, I deserve that."

I walk over and grabbing a wobbly stool from out of the corner, then come back and set myself up right across from my hostage.

"Act smarter than you look Demyx," I say.

"I'm not clued in to what's happening in the streets anymore. So how did I find you? How did I know where your crash pad was? How did I get the drop on you? It's because Saix _told_ me about you."

If the cook was looking scared before, he was looking terrified now. If the light was a bit better in here I'm sure that I would have been able to see the color drain from his face. I'd be lying if I said that I'm not enjoying having him over a barrel.

"They wouldn't do that to me," he mutters. His voice is so faint that I can barely hear him.

"Yes they would; you want to know what Saix said about you after I told him that I wanted to hit you?"

I lean in close so that my lips are close to his ear and I whisper; "_It's not like he's irreplaceable_."

I lean away and I can feel the smile tugging on my lips now.

"He essentially told me that I could kill you and walk away clean. You get the drift now?"

Demyx looks like he's about to completely lose his shit. His scrawny chest pumps in and out as his breathing becomes more labored. He's no longer looking me in the eyes and has begun mumbling something over and over again; it might be, '_why would he do that,_' but I'm not sure.

"The Organization's not going to come for you," I say. "That loyalty and respect mess they put out is just talk. I can actually…"

"Are you ever going to stop jackin' off and get to the fucking point," Demyx snaps, cutting me off.

My reluctant cousin, sitting there stripped down and tied to a dirty old chair, is just one big raw ball of nervousness and anger and piss-your-pants terror. Unexpectedly, a pang of genuine guilt goes right through my gut.

"Okay," I agree. "There's a lot of bad HEARTLESS flooding the streets right now, too much to be accidental. I want to know why you're pushing poison and I want to know who gave the order."

"I don't know what you're talking about," the cook mutters unconvincingly.

"Yes you do. I may not know the whole story but I know this much at least. You're going to tell me what I want to know."

Demyx shoots me the most hateful glare I've received since the last time somebody glared at me hatefully.

"Or else you'll what tough guy? You'll kill me? You ain't got the balls!"

I almost laugh right in his face. This lace-curtain junkie; a guy who couldn't crush a grape in a food fight, is trying to question my steez?

"You really want to go that route, man. Especially after what you saw happen earlier on tonight?"

"Fuck you Roxas," Demyx says back, most of the tremor gone from his voice.

"What I saw was your goons pulling triggers on my boys, not you. Y'know, growing up, you used to scare the piss out of me. Big, bad cousin Roxas- always up for a brawl; however, when it came down to taking that _final step_, you turned out to be the only one of us to never take it. No, I think I prefer to tell you jack shit and stay on the right side of some real killers."

Now it's my turn to glare; things seemed to be going so well just a second ago. A horrible thought occurs to me; Demyx isn't scared of me. What frightened him has the situation; the kick-door and the shooting, the blindfolds and the van ride; the cold room, dim room. He was intimidated by all of that, but not by me. I can't intimidate him. I look at him and I can tell. Where before Demyx was disoriented and frazzled, now he looked composed. His breathing was normal. His shoulders were steady and his eyes looked into mine with the quiet arrogance of a man who knew what it was like to snatch a life, looking at somebody who never had.

I can't say anything, so I just sit there like an impotent chump. He smirks slightly at my silence.

"Yeah, that's what I thought," Demyx spits. And then, he does the stupidest thing he could possibly do.

"Y'know, Xion also thought that you were a pussy."

As soon as he mentions her name, I feel my temperature shooting up and little beads of rage sweat forming on my brow.

"_Don't_ talk about her," is the only pathetic thing I'm able get out.

"Hey, don't sweat it man," he says.

"It was a long time ago. But I've got to tell you, just between you and me, that twat of hers was definitely Top Three. I can't imagine why you were too much of a punk to hit that; in fact neither could she. But trust, after I showed her what a _real man_ could do, she forgot all about you."

Before I know what I'm doing I shoot up out of my seat, knocking the stool onto the floor with a loud clatter. I've got no idea what to do next, all I know is that this piece of garbage doesn't deserve to have Xion's name on his lips and I've got to shut him up. I take a step towards Demyx and have to catch myself from falling as my leading foot lands on something lost in the inky blackness around the floor. My cousin laughs at me as I stumble. I look down to see what caused me to lose my balance; it's an old pair of wire cutters.

Grabbing the tools off of the floor, I jump up and rush to Demyx's side. I snatch hold of one of his bound hands and jerk his fingers apart before he can curl them into a ball.

"YOU WANNA FUCKIN' LAUGH, HUH?"

I shout at the top of my lungs and I place the teeth of the wire cutters halfway up his middle finger. Beneath me, my hostage is struggling, jerking this way and that and babbling so fast I can't understand him. I block him out, throw my weight down on the arm of his chair so that he can't tip us over…and then I squeeze the legs on the cutter.

Demyx screams and thrashes and weeps and moans and gnashes his teeth and as the blood from his finger dribbles out onto the hand that I have restraining him, I shout back…

"YOU STILL FEEL LIKE LAUGHING?"

I try to jerk the cutters closed, but I'm not able to get them to go all the way. I get up so that I can put both of my hands on the cutter's legs. What with Demyx still trying to struggle, it's a b it difficult to get everything to stay in place. However, after one good push and a twist, I'm finally able to snap the bone and watch as Demyx's right middle finger plops down to the floor.

"FUCK! FUCK! MY GODDAMN FUCKING FINGER YOU PSYCHO FUCK!"

Demyx is shouting himself hoarse. Once he runs out of wind he starts hyperventilating and crying a little bit. I place a hand on his heaving chest.

"Now, you're going to want to take deep breaths," I say.

"F-f-f-f-fu-…" he stutters, trying to get the word out, but just can't quite manage much beyond those first two letters.

"I'm going to go back to asking my questions. And you're going to answer them; now before you get any ideas about trying to get smart with me again, I want you to think about just how many pieces I can take off of you with this."

I shove the bloody cutters into his face, letting him get a good whiff of the metallic scent of his own blood. I step back to give Demyx some breathing room. He's got the shakes something awful; the legs of his chair are rattling like the walls on a shotgun house on stormy night.

"Wh…what was it you wanted to know?"

"Why the poison HEARTLESS," I ask.

"That was Marluxia's idea; it's his little '_fuck you_' to the Superior. He wants to go independent, thinks that if he can get the fiends to think that the Organization's product is low grade, he can get his foot in the market."

I find myself nodding my head a small portion of the puzzle I had been assembling finally revealed a picture. Marluxia never got on well with Xemnas and his desire to branch out on their own explains his group being in Destiny, a place where the Organization has a minimal presence.

"Okay, I buy Marluxia wanting to run his own show, but what's his reason for trying to step up now of all times?

"It's because he found out something none of the rest of us Numbers knew; Xemnas has been talking to the Turks."

"The Turks? _The_ Turks? Are you serious!"

Demyx just nods his head weakly. Wow…okay, that's. Dammit, that's pretty big. I wipe an imaginary smudge from around my mouth as I try to compose my thoughts and take in what I just heard.

"And Marluxia is upset by this? If the Organization starts working with the Turks…"

"Please," Demyx spits. "You don't work _with_ those old timers, you work _for_ them. No thanks on that deal; Marluxia knew I was against the whole thing and recruited me. Turns out, he'd been planning on screwing the Organization for a long time. Finding out what the Superior was up to just gave him the perfect justification to go ahead."

More puzzle pieces snapping into place.

"Which other Numbers besides you and Marluxia are part of the conspiracy," I ask.

"Lexaeus, Larxene and Zexion have been down from the beginning. But, lately, I've heard rumors that Marluxia and Larxene have been trying to talk to Axel."

My interest if piqued even further by that last little bit. Axel is the only member of the Organization that's admitted to knowing Pence. If Axel was close to this conspiracy and Pence was close to Axel, then maybe Pence's death really is deeper than an overdose.

There's only one thing left to ask.

"Does the name Pence mean anything to you?"

"No. Who's that?"

"Don't lie to me Demyx," I say while hefting tossing the wire cutters from hand to hand.

"I swear to God man, I'm not lying! If I knew something I'd squawk; just please…_please_…"

My hostage just sort of collapses into himself and breaks out into a fit of sobs, saying '_please, please, please_'. I'm not sure if he's talking to me or if he's asking whatever gods he believes in to just finally let this horrific night of his end. I just stand there watching him, crashing off of the adrenaline high that was keeping me aloft just a few seconds ago.

I see Demyx and I hate myself more than I ever have in my entire life.

I turn away and, like the coward that I am, get out of that room as fast as I can.

* * *

><p>Beyond the door, Tidus and his two birds are waiting for me.<p>

"How'd it go," he asks.

I look down at the wire cutters I still have gripped in my palm. I shove them towards Tidus.

"You take if from here."

Without another word to any of them, I walk out of that place and head straight towards the bus stop.


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter 16**

'…_Your problems follow you wherever you are so, really, ain't no point in running away…'_

**Sora**

Lately, I've been spending more time at home; my real home, mind you, not that little hole in the wall in Twilight Town where I currently rest my head. Frankly, it's kind of weird being back, sleeping in my old bed, in my old room- though I suppose, technically, it's not my _old_ room. I haven't been living on my own for all that long and it's not as if I never came around Destiny to visit.

It's just that living in Twilight Town has given me a whole new perspective on what life out here is like. Pretty much everything in the Town feels broken down and, before I moved there, I had this image in my head that the people living there would be just as bleak and grinding as their surroundings. And, honestly, the Townies didn't disappoint me. But, underneath the cynicism and the apathy the people of Twilight have this…I-don't-know-what-quality. I want to call it resilience, but I can't really say that that's the right way to describe it.

It's like the people in Twilight Town have got steel in their souls. Like the Lord of Disaster could come roaring down on them with the legions of horrors and miseries that escaped from Pandora's Box racing on his heels and the Townies would stand up to meet them.

And they would call them all fags.

You just don't see that kind of ballsiness in people from Destiny. I haven't made up my mind if that's a good or a bad thing.

Mom's certainly been all bubbly over the fact that I've spent the last few days sleeping over here; she get's all twisted over the fact that I live in a place as "violent" as Twilight Town. When told her that I had had enough of dad's bullshit and was using some of my C-fund money to rent a place in the Town, she almost stroked out.

Speaking of King Douche, he's actually been giving me a pretty wide berth while I've been home. Mom keeps trying to get us to talk and shit over breakfast, but I barely speak to him and he gives me the same business. Mom tries her best, but she's the only one in the room that hasn't figured out that him and me have _nothing_ to say to each other.

It was just after one such incredibly awkward Saturday morning meal that I decided that I needed to get out of that house before things got any stupider. Riku had cancled kendo practice today, so I had the entire day to myself. I walked down the driveway towards my car and had just put my hand onto the driver's side door when I paused and looked around. The sky above was clear and blue, barely blemished by a few fluffy white clouds scattered here and there. The weather was unseasonably warm; not balls sticking to your inner thigh warm but shirt sleeves and sandals warm.

Perfect bike riding weather.

I backed away from my car and headed into the garage to wheel my bike out from its usual corner. Swinging my leg over the red frame, I settled onto the seat and worked my feet onto the pedals, pumping them and propelling myself forwards.

As I whizzed down the street past the numerous examples of suburban opulence that my neighbors displayed to the world; the multiple car garages, the houses with one hundred windows, the teams of professional landscapers that tended to the greenery of their employers like modern-day serfs, I was struck by just how dickishly rich everyone here was.

I take the street out of my neighborhood and start on the bike path heading into downtown.

I had just been riding around aimlessly for about an hour, past the trendy sunglasses shops and upscale espresso cafes, tooling around the park, not having any sort of destination in mind when I noticed that I was getting pretty thirsty and that if I didn't want to dehydrate I'd have to stop and get some water. It's as I'm coming pedaling towards one of those espresso cafes that I see something that just about makes me sick.

It's Kairi; only, she's not alone. She's with that guy- Marluxia.

I duck inside the doorway of a wireless store before either one of them can see me. Kairi and that pink-haired asshole are sharing a table in front of Little Tony's Classic Pizza, hunched over a pie. I watch as he reaches out and brushes some hair out of her face. She giggles and looks demure. I contemplate the mechanics of forcing a bicycle up a man's ass. I suppose I could start with the handle bars, but then how would I get the frame and the wheels to…

Oh fuck! They're kissing! Like, _kissing_-kissing!

I can do nothing but watch in impotent horror as the one girl that I can genuinely say I want for more than her in and out bits makes out with that…with that…guy.

What if I just go over there and say something? I should go over there and say something…the hell with it; I'm going over there and saying something.

I'm just about take the first step out of the doorway where I'm hiding when I freeze. I've heard some things about Marluxia since he showed up in my school- some of it good, some of it horrifying- and I'm not afraid of him. But charging over there and interrupting what is obviously a date is not going to make me look very cool in Kairi's eyes.

It's as I'm watching the girl of my dreams feed some other guy a piece of pepperoni that I remember something that I had up to this point forgotten. I lock my bike onto one of the racks out on the street; moving as stealthily as possible so that the couple sitting a few doors down don't spy me. Once I'm done with that, I scurry back into the wireless store. After shooing away the salesperson I reach down into my pocket and grab my phone.

Scrolling through the pictures, I find the one that I snapped of Marluxia and his goons while we were all in school. Running my thumb across the touchscreen, I bring up Roxas' number and post him the picture with a simple message.

'_do u kno them?'_

* * *

><p><strong>Roxas<strong>

Lately, I've been trying to spend as little time at home as possible. I've been getting up early to go to school, staying out late enough so that I _just_ miss my mom when she leaves the house to go to work the night shift and making sure I'm up in my bed pretending to be asleep when she gets home.

I'm afraid if she gets to see me for more than a few moments at a time, she's going to notice something's wrong with me. I haven't been sleeping much since the…incident. The crushers found the bodies; it took them a few days, but they found'em. That girl we left tied up in that house managed to free herself after a night of struggling and called somebody on the house's phone. She hit up one of her friends to come get her and take her home, but didn't want to say anything about what happened to the cops.

We scared her so bad that she had to have her family convince her to come in and make a statement; two and a half days later. By that time, the crushers had already found the Demyx's boys; the girl's statement gave those corpses context.

I've been super high-strung ever since; paranoia. Every second I'm awake- which is practically all the damn time now- I keep thinking the crushers are about to kick in the door and drag me out. It'll go down quick; they'll catch me while I'm eating lunch at school or when I'm on the toilet taking a shit.

The police'll come in with their guns out, smack me down to the floor and put the irons to my head. Hell, there will probably be TV cameras there, too, flashing lights in my face, trying to capture footage of the baby-faced psycho responsible for one of the worst outrages to happen in Twilight Town for years. And on the side, there's my mom, crying her poor tired eyes out as her only child is taken away and the whole world calls her a bad parent for raising such a bloodthirsty little hellspawn.

That's the type of shit that's been going through my mind.

A pair of soft fingers reaches up to my ear and gives it a violent twist.

"Gah! What the hell?"

Naminé's expression looks annoyed, like she's offended that I even dared to respond.

"I was right in the middle of talking to you and you zoned out…again."

She shifts a few inches away from me on the park bench that the two of us are sharing. It was Naminé's idea to come to the park; that time that I haven't been spending at home, I've been spending it with her. She said that seeing as how it was such a nice day, it would be a shame to spend it sitting inside; I went along with what she said so that I wouldn't be at home where my mom would try to, like, talk to me, or something.

Mom was actually pretty happy to let me go; I think that she thinks Naminé and I are either back together or in the process of getting back together. My mom always liked Naminé.

The girl in question reaches up to tweak my ear again, but I swat her hand away. Undeterred, she tries it again with the other hand on the other ear. We go back and forth for a minute; her trying to grab my ears and me slapping her hands away until I manage to get the timing just right and grab her wrists before she can pull them away.

"Okay, why are you still doing that," I say, exasperated.

"I didn't hear an _I'm_ _sorry_," she replies testily.

"Y…Are you serious?"

"Believe it or not, manners still matter to some people."

I release Naminé's wrists and lean back on the bench back, rubbing my temples with the tips of my fingers.

"I'm sorry. I. Am. Sorry. What is it you were talking about again?"

Naminé starts to say something, then stops. She chews on her bottom lip a little bit, and then she scoots a bit closer to me on the seat.

"Don't worry about it. It's not really that important anyway."

I recognize that body language; I should by now, she's been doing it since the day I told her about the heist on Demyx. I didn't tell her everything, of course; I don't want any blowback coming onto her, the crushers calling her an accessory to the nonsense I'm caught up in. I clammed about anything having to do with guns or drugs or bodies or what happened to Demyx in that dark room after I left.

She knows that I did _something_ though, and that same something is turning me into a nervous wreck.

My eyes linger on her blonde top before cutting away to the rare bit of green space the Twilight Town government allows its residents. I'm sorry, but putting non-skeletal trees and bushes and carefully manicured lawns in the middle of _this_ town just seems weird.

Naminé lays her head down on my shoulder and sighs.

"Why is it we've been doing more date type things when we're broken up than we were doing as a couple?"

"What are you talking about," I reply. "We did all kinds of couples stuff; all the time."

She just scoffs at me. "Please Roxas. Hanging out at the strip and letting you dick me in the woods behind the 5th and 3rd were not my ideas of an awesome date."

"Well damn, if I was so lame, why didn't you ever say anything?"

"Hey, I didn't say it was all bad, did I?"

I grin slyly at her. "Yeah, because you enjoyed the di…"

"The dickings," Naminé says, quickly cutting me off before I can get started. "And yeah, they were good…eventually."

"Eventually?"

"Sorry, but your name used to be _two pump chump_."

A laugh escapes my jaw and darts into exposed world with the speed of a runaway slave. At my side, Naminé giggles. That sound and the fact that I had a little something to do with creating it makes me stop hating the world for a moment.

Just as I'm warming to the idea of spending a nice, quiet day in the park, I feel the gentle buzz of my phoned going off in my pocket. My features settle into a frown, because I'm already certain that this is going to be some bullshit.

I look in the phone and see that I've got a direct text from my brother.

"It's Sora," I say with some mild surprise.

"You and your brother don't talk all that much right? Why's he calling you now?"

"It's probably some bullshit," I say. My '_fuck-my-life'_ sense is tingling.

Naminé spares me a concerned look for a few seconds before turning her head away and focusing on something on the other side of the park where I can't see. I look at the message, and then I look at the picture that goes with it.

"Goddamn it," I snap as Marluxia's faggy pink coif appears on my screen.

"What is it," Nams practically squeaks, turning quickly back to me.

"Some bullshit, like I said. Look, I've got to go and do…uh…stuff."

Naminé rolls her eyes. "Yeah, you go ahead and do that. Just don't go doing anything dangerous- I mean, too dangerous- alright?"

I'm not even going to begin to tell that lie. Instead I lean in and give her a quick kiss on the lips, like it's the most natural thing in the world. She goes all stiff for a second, but she doesn't pull away. I push myself to my feet and gulp my heart back down my throat.

"I'll see you later."

"Yeah. Call me whenever you get done."

* * *

><p><strong>Sora<strong>

The ringtone I use for my brother's number goes off. I quickly put the receiver up to my mouth.

"What the hell are you doing," Roxas says from the other end of the line.

"Nothing yet, but the day is still young," I reply. "And, hello to you to by the way."

"Sora, don't try to be funny, you suck at it," my brother replies. I notice that he sounds more pissed off than usual today.

"Where are you right now," he asks.

"I'm in downtown Destiny, in a wireless shop a couple of doors down from where Marluxia is having lunch."

"Okay…Just stay there, I'll be on my way."

"So I guess I was right in assuming you do know who the Twilight Town guys in my school are."

Once a thug, always a thug; the accusation hangs in my statement. Roxas either doesn't notice it or doesn't care.

"That guy in that picture, he's a Nobody and he's dangerous; more dangerous than anybody you have ever met. Don't go near him."

"He's got Kairi with him," I say hotly.

If Marluxia is really as bad as my brother is making him out to be, I've got to get her away from him.

"Look, I know you're sweet on that girl and everything, but you _need_ to listen to what I am telling you right now," Roxas says from the other end of the line.

"Marluxia doesn't like anybody making him look bad; you run up to him in the street now and interrupt his fun, he's going to come back and hurt you. And I mean _really_ hurt you. And then probably firebomb your mom's car for shits and giggles."

This whole situation is nuts. I just want to throw down the phone and walk outside and confront that creep with Kairi. But the insistence in Roxas' voice is forcing me to stay put. I don't make a habit of listening to my brother, but I've got to realize that he knows more about these people than I do. Swallowing my anger, along with my pride, I talk back into the receiver.

"Look, I promise not to make a scene, but I'm not just going to leave this alone."

I can hear my brother cursing under his breath, but he snaps back to attention in no time.

"Alright, fine…They haven't seen you or anything, right?"

"No way," I say.

I'm about 98% sure of it.

"Just, follow them or something. But you were probably going to do that anyway weren't you?"

I shrug. "Hey, you know me."

"Unfortunately. I'll be downtown in 30-something minutes. Just don't get seen, alright? I'm serious."

"Right, I've got it already," I reply before cutting off the connection.

Collecting myself, I walk out of my hiding spot and, back on the street, try to look down to the table where Marluxia and Kairi are sitting without being too obvious about it. The two of them are still there, though it looks like they're about to leave since there's a waiter next to them and it looks like he's holding a check.

Oh shit, they're getting up! Which way are they going? Are they going to come this way? Okay, okay, just chill. I've got to act cool. I turn my backs to them and lean against the bike rack in what I sincerely hope is a nonchalant fashion; after all, Destiny isn't that big of a place and there's nothing weird about me being here on a nice sunny day like this.

I've just about soaked my undershirt with nerve sweat when I screw up the courage to look back over to Little Tony's. Marluxia and Kairi are walking away, arm in arm, but they're not coming my way. Pushing myself off of the bike rack I begin strolling slowly after them. I pretend to window shop; keeping one eye on the wares on display while keeping the other on the couple I'm trailing. There are only a few more places they could be headed, unless they're going to a car, in which case I'll lose them.

"C'mon, c'mon."

I'm muttering to myself. I really want them to keep still and not go anyplace until Roxas gets here. I'm not entirely sure what I expect my brother to do when he gets here, but I know that I'll just feel better having somebody else here with me.

I'm starting to get worried that Kairi and Marluxia might actually be heading to a car until I see them stop in front of the Movie House. The Movie House is something of a local landmark; it's this old-timey movie theater and the inside is covered with classic movie posters and memorabilia and they show mostly vintage and indie films. After the two of them went through the doors, I looked up at the marquee to see what was playing today.

"_Amnesia_."

I've never heard of that one, but whatever. As long as it's not a short feature, it would give my brother enough time to get here. After waiting what I think is an appropriate amount of time for Marluxia and Kairi to find seats, I dig into my wallet for some cash and buy a ticket to the show. Walking through the lush lobby and into the theater where they're screening the movie, I see that the place isn't very crowded. I take a seat in the back row, next to the wall. Turning my phone on silent mode, I send a quick text to Roxas, telling him where I am and where I'm sitting. I try to scan the seats around me for some sign of Marluxia's silhouette; it doesn't take me all that long to find him.

That accomplished, I settle in and wait. I try to get into the movie, but I'm having a hard time following what's happening since I keep looking down to see what Marluxia is doing to Kairi. I'm in there for a little while when I feel a tap on my shoulder; I look up and see…

* * *

><p><strong>Roxas<strong>

"About time you got here," my little brother mutters.

"Gimme a break, I had to take the bus out here alright."

I quickly dip into the aisle and sit next to my little brother.

"So where are they," I ask.

Sora points out Marluxia and Kairi down in the front.

"You got a plan or something," Sora asks me.

That's a pretty fair question, actually. Honestly, I didn't think too much about that. I put my hand to my chin and think.

"Okay, here's what we're going to do. You go home, get your car and come back. I'll stay here and keep an eye on those two. When the movie ends, we'll see where they go."

"You sure I'll have enough time before the movie ends," little bro asks.

"Don't worry; I've seen this movie before. We've got plenty of time as long as you get going now."

"Okay; see you later."

With barely a sound, Sora slips out of his seat and quickly shuffles to the exit. With him gone, I settle in for the rest of the movie. I usually don't have much interest in the flicks, but _Amnesia_ has got a pretty special place in my heart. When I was eleven years old, mom and I were living in the basement of a women's shelter out in Mouseton; she'd gotten laid off and I remember her being really depressed.

The shelter was right across the street from a big strip mall that had a two story Babel Records store; they had thousands of records and also sold appliances too. I knew that her birthday was coming up and I also knew that she was a massive fan of this old band called The True, so, to cheer her up, I had the "brilliant" idea of going in there and swiping the band's entire catalogue and giving it to mom as a present.

I actually managed to stuff all of the The True's albums into my backpack before I got greedy and decided to help myself to some more swag. I was raiding one of the 2nd floor displays when one of the employees finally spotted me and yelled at me to stop. Of course, I broke and ran. Fortunately I was small for my age so I was able to get out of the first guy's sight by rolling under a CD display table. The floor guy called in backup, so for around 20 minutes I played one of the gayest games of hide and seek ever with store security.

I finally managed to give them the slip once and for all by squeezing into the space between two long display banks of TV's. It was the perfect hiding place; down there amongst the wires and the shadows, all I had to do was stay scrunched up, stay still, and stay quiet and everybody would just walk on by. Thing was, I wasn't the only kid that day who decided to use this as a hiding place. A little ways down to my right, there was a little dark-haired girl folded up in exactly the same way I was.

That's how I first met Xion and unlike me she wasn't hiding from store security; she was hiding from her stepdad.

She was pretty pissed to have another person sharing her space, but I wasn't about to shake the spot for her, so she had to accept me being there. The two of us had to stay down there in the dust and the dark for more than three hours. We couldn't talk much for obvious reasons, so the only entertainment we had was watching whatever was on the TV's on the displays across from us through the gaps in the sets on our side.

Amnesia was playing.

Eventually I worked up enough courage to whisper something to her and after a pause, she said something back. In hushed tones, we learned that our circumstances in life weren't that different. Sadly, our little idyll came to an abrupt end when one of the customers noticed that somebody was watching him while he was watching for picture quality. I got taken away by the crushers and my mom had to spend her birthday in a police station. But before I was gone for good Xion gave me a quick peck on the lips.

So there it is; first arrest, first kiss, first time I realized just how much of a rush I get when I break the rules.

I'm slouched down in my seat, about 4/5th of the way through the movie when little brother slips back into the seat next to mine.

"They still here," he asks.

"Yep," I reply. "We should get going. Where are you parked?"

"I found a parallel space on the street. We'll be able to watch them as they come out of the theater and see where they go."

"Good work. Let's go."

We hop out of our seats and silently leave out of the back. As we make our way into the lobby, I send a quick prayer up to the ceiling; please, _please_ don't let anything retarded happen.


	17. Chapter 17

**Okay...let's finish this thing, shall we?**

* * *

><p>'…<em>get home and get stoned and lie about your righteousness…'<em>

**Roxas**

Sora and mine's birthdays are only 10 days apart. I really only became aware that I had a brother when I turned eight- the day that, for some insane reason, his mom and my mom decided it would be a good idea to have combined parties for the two of us. It's one of the most awkward memories that I have.

There's his mom, in her silk blouse and tasteful summer skirt clinging to her body, making a game attempt to keep the mood light and festive. Next to her is the resident the sperm donor. There's my mom, calmly nursing a can of beer on the knee of her ripped jeans and doing her best to ignore the guy that knocked her up and then dipped on her. And then there's dear old dad, flop sweat dripping through his shirt; face wearing an expression like his doctor just told him the cancer had metastasized to his dick and amputation was looking likely.

But the memory that's most clear to me is the first good view I ever got of Sora. Here was this kid that looked scarily similar to me, kitted out with clothes way more expensive than my mom could get me, and with a complete family. A mom and a dad; to my unsophisticated child-brain, Sora had the whole world.

It annoyed the hell out of me. Plus, he was all fidgety.

Looking back, I can get why the kid would feel…put off by the whole awkward experience, but at the time I just couldn't understand why my little brother seemed so nervous. How he was acting back then, all fidgety and unsure, is a lot like how he's acting right now. It's still fuckin annoying.

"Yo, are you alright," I ask.

"Yeah, why?"

"Nothin much; just that you're not going to have a thumb if you keep nomming on it like that."

Sora jumps slightly in his seat, apparently surprised at what he was doing.

"Sorry," he mumbles before gripping the steering wheel tightly with both hands.

My eyes linger on baby brother for a few more seconds before I pull away and focus on the road in front of us. Way up in the distance, almost too far for me to make out, is the ass-end of the car that Marluxia and Kairi are riding in. Me and Sora had left the village limits of Destiny a while ago and found ourselves traveling along a two lane stretch of black asphalt, bordered on both sides by farmland and not a whole hell-of-a-lot else.

"I hope you know where we are," I say, staring out of my window, transfixed by some big conical whatchamacallit rising out of the darkness. What were those things even for?

"Chill bro. It might be cliché to say so, but I really do know these roads like the back of my hand."

We roll along in a somewhat uneasy silence before Sora voices the question that's probably been rattling around in both of our skulls for a while now.

"Where do you think they're going?"

"Your guess is as good as mine…matter of fact, I should be asking you that. You know this area like the back of your hand, yeah? What's out here?"

"Jack shit," my brother replies. "Just fields, farms and livestock. We keep going down this road and we'll eventually hit Mouseton, but that place is just a cow-town."

Suddenly, the car we're pursuing makes a left turn, pulling off the main highway and onto a side road. Sora and I exchange a wordless glance; he slows down slightly as we approach the side road. As we make the left he turns off our headlights, throwing the path in front of us into complete darkness. The only thing I can spy out of the front window is a fleeing pair bouncing red taillights. Sora presses on the gas and we follow, maintaining our safe distance. We travel like this for five, maybe six minutes before Marluxia and Kairi's care pull off onto a long driveway leading onto some fenced off property.

Sora drives a little bit past the driveway before applying the brakes and pulling over behind a small grouping of trees standing next to the fence line.

"I'm going to go check the place out," I say.

"We're _both_ going to go check the place out," Sora counters.

I feel like I should try to dissuade him, but that look he's giving me tells me that I'd just be wasting my time.

"Fine…whatever; let's just get this over with."

The two of us bail out of the car and creep around the trunks of the trees, towards the fence line. Even though it's dark out here, I'm able to get a pretty good view of the land. There's a two-story farmhouse sitting in the center of the lot, lit up so bright you could probably see it from space. Given the amount of cars I can see parked around the place, it's obvious that Marluxia and Kairi aren't going to be the only ones in that house. Between us and the farmhouse sits a creepy looking barn; no apparent signs of life coming from that place.

"We should get in closer," Sora says.

"Let's head for the barn" I say back.

Thankfully the fence pinning in this property is only around chest height; both of us are able to hoist ourselves over the thing with little effort. Sora and I scurry like a couple of cockroaches towards the barn, pressing ourselves up against the weathered wood. Little chips of paint scrape onto me as I inch towards the corner of the building. Slowly, I poke my head around and try to see if there is anything to see.

"Make some room," Sora mutters while muscling me aside so that he can get his own head around the corner.

The barn is close enough to the house so that we're able to get a good view of the front porch. I count six guys and a couple of birds hanging out. There's Marluxia, his arm slung around Kairi, talking to a guy with very distinct shock of red hair.

"Motherfucker," I mutter.

"What is it," my brother asks.

"You see that big guy over there with the long red hair? His name's Axel; he's a Number and he ain't supposed to be here with these guys."

I pull my head back around behind the barn. I think that I've seen enough. I tap Sora on his shoulder and pull him away.

"C'mon, let's get out of here."

"What? Why?'

"Because that place has got Nobodies everywhere and there's nothing else for us to do here. We

should go before we get caught."

"But what about Kairi," he asks.

"Kairi is about to get dicked," I say matter-of-factly. "She might be a little sore in the morning, but she'll be okay."

Sora looks like he wants to punch me in the face. I think for a second that he's really going to do it, but then he gathers himself and puts on his serious face, telling me,

"Listen, I don't want to leave just yet. I'm going to try to sneak into the house."

"Are you retarded," I snap. "What is the point of- no, don't! Don't!"

I sputter protestations to empty space; Sora's already slipped around the corner and started creeping around towards the back of the house. I mutter every curse I know and a few I just made up at his back as he gets farther and farther away; he's still got the car keys. If his stupid ass gets caught, I'm stuck with him.

I start to go after him, but catch myself before I leave the safety of the barn. The Nobodies catch Sora, they'll beat seven kinds of dog-shit out of him, but Marluxia won't kill him while he's got his girl there. The Nobodies catch me and, Kairi or not, all bets are liable to be off…

I grit me teeth. I go back to the car and I mumble a prayer to whatever God is listening that nothing happens to my jackass little brother.

* * *

><p><strong>Sora<strong>

Sneaking around to the back of the farmhouse without being seen was cake; the whole party seemed to be taking place on the front porch. All I had to do was keep out of the light coming from the front of the place and take a wide arc around to the back yard. The nervousness doesn't hit me until I'm in the yard and next to the house and it strikes me that I've come to the hard part. The backdoor to the house is old-timey; flaking white paint and a fly screen cut right in the middle. I don't know if it leads to the kitchen or what, but there's light coming through that space and light is my enemy at the moment. There are a couple of windows situated further down the side of the building; I heat towards those. If I can get one of those open, I'll go in; if not, I head back to the car.

Reaching the first windowsill, I give it a push; it doesn't budge. I struggle with it for a few minutes without any obvious progress; the stupid things are probably locked. Grumbling, sweat sprouting all over my body from a mix of nervousness and the warm night, I go to the second window. I'm in luck, this one is raised slightly, a space about three finger thick separating the bottom of the windowpane from the sill. Placing my fingers beneath the window pane I slowly begin raising it; my muscles are coiled, ready to spring backwards and sprint into the night incase somebody tries to stick out their arm and grab me. I keep lifting until I've made a space big enough for me to slip my body through.

Taking a moment to swallow a lungful of air and psych myself up, I place my hands on the windowsill and boost my head and shoulders through the space and slide/roll/tumble into the room. It's dark inside this room; dark but quiet. I climb to my feet and listen…

No startled yelps of surprise; no footfalls in the dark. So far so good.

I slink over to the door and place my ear on the wood. I hear nothing; taking this as a good sign, I crack the door open and peek my head out into the hallway, scanning both directions. This corridor is unlit; the only light and sound in the whole house seems to be coming from my left, in the direction of the kitchen. Swallowing my nerves, I step out into the hall and start towards the noise, trying to walk with as little sound as possible. As I inch my way down the hall it occurs to me that I really have little to no idea what I'm doing.

I'm in a house filled with goddamn gangsters; actual killers. And I'm in here looking for what exactly? Evidence?

I keep inching along the wall until I start to hear voices. I freeze, and get ready to run; back down the hall, into the room, through the window, across the yard, over the fence, back to the car. The voices don't sound like they're getting any closer; for the time being, I stay put and eavesdrop.

"…and I don't know about you man, but I'm trying to see if we can get any more bitches over here; there ain't nearly enough right now," a deep voice says.

"I thought you had a bird," a higher voice replies.

"Yeah, but she ain't here, is she? What, Lux and Banco are the only ones allowed to get any pussy tonight? My dick's way more needy than theirs!"

The other voice laughs. "That's fucked up bro!"

"I'm just sayin…you seen Lux's girl?"

"The fly, preppy bitch? How could I not?"

I realize that they're talking about Kairi. All on their own, my fists ball up in anger; these pricks are lucky I'm hiding, or they'd get it.

"You think Lux would be down to let us run a train?"

Deep voice sounds hopeful.

"Now way," higher voice says. "That's all him. Face it bro, you're just going to have to beat your dick tonight like usual."

While high voice laughs at his own joke, deep voice says something to low for me to make out.

"Yo, you know Lux's got the yams right," deep voice says after his friend's laughter dies down.

"What, you mean with he's got them _here_?"

"Uh-huh. I saw Lux come in with a big-ass duffle bag full of them of them. He showed me one before he took'em up to his room."

I have no idea what these goons are talking about. I wish Roxas were here to translate for me.

Deep voice continues.

"So I'm thinking, we can call up some of those Destiny hoes and townie hoes and, tell'em we got some party favors and get this thing crackin' know what I'm sayin?"

"Man, Lux will cut your throat if you just take his shit like that. You better ask first."

"Of course; you think I'm stupid?"

I hear the grating sound of chair legs scraping across linoleum and immediately retreat a few steps down the hall. From the sound of things it looks like both of those Nobodies have left the room.

Okay, so, I'm not exactly sure what "yams" are supposed to be, but since I'm in a gang house with gang members, I'm going to assume that they're drugs. Drugs are evidence.

Straining my ears for the slightest sound of anyone approaching, I walk towards the end of the hall and peek quickly into the kitchen. Nobody takes my head off. I edge around the corner and look to the front of the house. The second of the two Nobodies from the kitchen is walking out the front door and onto the porch.

The door swings part-way closed behind him and I know, down in my gut that I've got to move _now_! Adrenaline coursing through my veins, heart beating out of my ears I power walk through the kitchen, to the foyer and scamper up the stairs with the grace of a startled roach fleeing from a foot.

I can scarcely believe it when I reach the second floor.

Immediately, I start looking around. From the sound of things, nobody besides me is up here. I look around and try to decide which door to try out first. Figuring I should go with the closest one, I place my hand on the knob and turn.

'_Creeeeek'_

I wince; the door squeaks as I pull it open. Holding my breath, I look inside and find…tile, sink, commode, bathtub.

This is not the room I'm looking for.

I check the next door across the hall. Thankfully this one doesn't squeak. I've struck a bedroom this time; hopefully, it's the right bedroom. Stepping inside, I quickly push the door closed behind me. I'm struck by just how neat the place is; maybe I'm unfairly stereotyping, but I was expecting the scene to be a bit more…toxic. That means I'll have to be extra careful not to disturb anything; no point in letting Marluxia know somebody's been rifling through his stuff.

I slink over to the chest of drawers and start pulling stuff open; socks, faggy underwear, lots of v-neck t-shirts, and a little bag of weed, but nothing else.

I slide onto my belly and check under the bed; besides a few dumbbells and a shoebox filled with CD's, nothing to see there either. I check in the closet but that also leaves me with nothing; where else can I look? I scan around the room and notice another door over by the lamp. I inside and flip the light switch to discover that this door leads to an attached bathroom, big enough for a shower, a sink, a toilet and a window above that.

Sinking into a crouch I pull open the cabinet door in the bottom of the sink; there's only two things under there. A roll of toilet paper and a big black duffel bag. Excited to finally get somewhere I grab the bag and yank it out, but when I open the top I find nothing inside. Cursing under my breath, I set the duffle bag back underneath the sink.

I'm feeling like a real chump; I'm in here risking my life and I haven't found anything I can use against the Nobodies. No drugs, no guns, nothing. Did Marluxia hide the drugs somewhere besides his room? The two gangsters downstairs said that he brought them up here…I mean, this is his room, right? I just kind of assumed that it was, but maybe I…

"Arrgh," I groan. Beating myself up is not going to do me any good. I calm down; I think.

I notice the toilet and realize that there's one place that I haven't checked yet. I place my hands around the top of the water cabinet and lift it out of the way.

"Fuckin' A."

Sitting down in the tank, wrapped up tight in two layers of duct-tape and plastic were six rectangular parcels. Each one was about the length and width of my hand. I pluck one out of the bog and hold it in my palm, probing the wrapping with the fingers of my opposite hand. It doesn't feel how I expected it to; it's pretty hard, but not heavy. It's like a block of wood or plastic piping. I straighten things up in the bathroom.

Time to go.

* * *

><p><strong>Roxas<strong>

I'm really wishing I had some smokes right now; that or something a little harder to take the edge off. Standing out here, alone, by Sora's car and waiting for my brother to appear out of the darkness. It's…

"Roxas!"

I nearly jump out of my skin when I hear my brother's voice. I spin and see Sora slouching awkwardly out of the darkness.

"W'sup with you man? You're moving like you've just shit yourself."

"Wha? No, I found something in the house- had to stuff it down my pants when I climbed out of a window."

Sora reaches into his shorts and pulls out a rectangular package. He tosses it to me before pulling out his keys and popping the locks on the car. We both tumble into our seats and my brother wastes no time turning over the engine.

We tear ass outta there like Satan himself was tailing us.

Sora's got the steering wheel in a death grip; he's trembling all over, buzzing with adrenaline. He's gunning it so much that we nearly run off the road when he whips us around a corner.

"Hey, slow down," I snap. "You want to get us busted?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah. Sorry."

As we recede to a sane speed, I turn the package over in my hands. There's obviously drugs in this thing, the only question is…

"What's in here?"

"No idea," my brother replies. "They called it a yam though. Does that word mean anything to you?"

"It might."

I use my nails to pry open the wrapping.

"Well damn."

"What is it," Sora asks.

"Not 100% sure, but I think it's heroin."


	18. Chapter 18

'…_crime rate through the roof, One-Time missing proof…'_

**Roxas**

The sound of creaking gears penetrates my ears as the doors of the bus close behind me. I turn to watch the old beast rumble down the boulevard, farting acrid exhaust fumes all the way down the block.

"So which way is his apartment," Naminé asks.

"It's not too far. Follow me," I say.

It had been a couple of days since my brother and I had our little caper. When I had told Sora that I thought the stuff that he had taken out of Marluxia's house was heroin, I made the mistake of telling him just how much time the crushers could give you if they caught you holding weight. He got all twitchy, wanted to toss the yam down a sewer drain or mail it to a police station. I had to spend a day calming him down, convincing him that it would be a better idea to try and hold onto the shit. At least for a little while. After some arguing Sora agreed to stash the stuff at his spot until we were ready to figure out our next move.

We look both ways before stepping off of the sidewalk and dash across the street, sneakers scraping across the pavement. Naminé and I pause in the median as we wait for an SUV rumbling down the road to streak past. Not too much traffic out right now, but people in Twilight Town seem to have a moral objection against braking for pedestrians.

Safely across the street, we head through the desolate parking lot of a strip mall towards our destination; I can make out the roofs of some of the housing blocks rising above the low buildings surrounding it.

"I'm surprised a guy as lace-curtain as your brother lives out here," Naminé says.

"I was too, at first," I admit. "He seems to be doing alright out here though, so I guess you never can tell with people."

She's silent for a moment.

"Do you two actually, y'know…_like_ each other now?"

"What?"

She shrugs. "Its just that I've known you for years and the few times you talked about Sora, I don't remember you saying anything brotherly."

Its my turn to shrug. "I guess he's not as much of a punk as I thought."

"I have to say, I'm really enjoying this '_Roxas admits he's wrong'_ thing you've been doing lately."

We reach the privacy fence encircling Sora's apartment. I say privacy fence, but its actually just a very tall chain link barrier that doesn't actually conceal anything. I step up to a section of fence where the chain is loose from the fence post and pull it aside to make a space big enough for Naminé to get through. I spend a hot second admiring her backside as she slips through before joining her on the other side. As we shuffle down the grassy embankment backing Sora's apartment complex, she stumbles a bit when we hit the bottom. I catch her at the waist; I think I keep my hands around her waist a little longer than I'm supposed to but she doesn't make a big deal out of it beyond giving me a look. We both shake it off and head towards Sora's building.

"So, this is some real heavy shit you got yourself into," Naminé says.

"Yeah, well, you know me. Born fuckup."

I wince as the girl by my side punches me in my arm. "What the hell woman?"

"Don't say that about yourself," Naminé snaps. "You're not like how you were…"

She's got all the reasons in the world to still hate me, and yet she believes that I'm a decent person; maybe even a good person. My mind flashes back to a hot night in a dungeon with a pair of wire cutters and I realize that Naminé doesn't know what the hell she's talking about.

"C'mon, Sora's is just around this next building," I say and start walking a little faster.

When we reach the door, Naminé reaches past me and beats on the door.

'_knock, knock, knock…_'

We don't have to wait long. I see a shadow briefly fall over the peephole before the tumblers on the door locks start rumbling. My brother sticks his head out of the door and wordlessly beckons us to come inside.

"You didn't tell me you were bringing a third," Sora says as he closes and locks the door behind us.

"She kinda just invites herself places," I reply. "This is…"

"Your name's Naminé, right?"

"Yeah," she replies. Naminé shoots me the suspicious side eye even though I'm just as taken aback as she is.

"Has somebody been talking about me?"

"No, no," Sora says, laughing it off. "You might not recall, but we've met before. It was a couple of years ago at the Summer Swap Meet; you were there with some old woman and you were selling those…what were they again?"

"The bootleg ZaZaa handbags," she says, laughing at the memory. I'm not really sure if I like how easily they're getting along.

"Oh my God, auntie used to drag me there with her all the time to hawk those knockoffs. I'm surprised you'd remember some random chick pushing faux-leather totes."

Sora shrugs nonchalantly and flashes his patented "I'm-a-nice-guy-who's-_totally_-_not_-trying-to-game-his-way-into-your-panties, honestly!" smile.

"It's easy to remember the pretty ones."

If I had been the one saying that line, I'm certain that I would have sounded like a total dickhead, and Naminé would have clowned me on it. My ex-girlfriend giggles demurely and blushes a little bit at my brother. I'm disgusted, yet not really surprised.

"Can we focus here," I interject. I'm doing my best to keep the edge out of my voice; judging by the smirk Sora gives me, I didn't quite nail it.

"Yeah, sure. It's back here," my brother says.

Naminé and I trail him back to the apartment's tiny kitchen area. Lying right there on the table, for all the world to see, was the yam that Sora had stolen from Marluxia. While Naminé and I pull up some chairs and have a seat my brother, suddenly very nervous, decides to pace, hovering around the table like he doesn't want to get too close to the drugs. What the hell? Does he think that the thing is radioactive or something?

"So," he asks me.

"So what," I say back.

"Don't get smart, Roxas. I was kind of expecting that you would have a plan on how to deal with…this."

He points an accusatory finger at the package of heroin on his kitchen table.

"I can't just keep sitting on it, y'know? I still say we should give it to the cops."

"Bruh, I already told you, you turn the yam into the crushers and they're going to want to know where you got it, when you took it, and why you have it. And I don't give a fuck what them people tell you about protecting your identity, word gets around and Lux is a psychopath. Eventually he'll find out what you did and he'll come after you."

Sora just goes '_pff'_ and rolls his eyes. Clearly, he thinks I'm playing.

"Roxas, the guy's a gangbanging punk, not the godfather."

"Yeah, keep taking this as a joke," I snap. "You've got no idea how dangerous he really is."

The earnestness in my voice seems to shock Sora for a moment; but it's only for a moment. I can see that he still wants to have things his way. I have to remind myself that he's not from the same world as me. Where he grew up, crushers were politely referred to as "officer" and helped little old ladies with their groceries. He's going to have to learn that law and order isn't going to help us in this. Recognizing the tension, Naminé

"Why are you so hung up on knowing who these people's supplier is?

"Marluxia had to get that work from somewhere. Right now, he's walking around with one less yam than he's supposed to have, which means he's probably going to have some suppliers wondering where the rest of their money is when it comes time to pay that bill. We hand the yam over to the crushers, we throw away our leverage."

"You worry about leverage," Sora retorts. "I understand you've got this whole secret agenda thing going on bro, but all _I_ care about is getting Marluxia and his goons away from my school and my friends. You don't trust the police in T-Town, fine. We take it to the station in Destiny, let them know about the farmhouse, let them handle it."

"But this Marluxia asshole has got to know by now that some of his work is missing," Naminé chimes in.

"Even if you told the crushers in Destiny about where you found the yam, if those Nobodies have any brains at all, they'll have already moved the stuff to another stash house."

I can practically hear Sora's molars grinding in frustration. Its clear that this is all weighing heavily on his mind; he _needs_ to get this shit out of his space.

"What the hell are Nobodies even doing with heroin anyway," my brother snaps, the frustration bubbling over. "I thought HEARTLESS was their thing."

Sora sends an accusatory glare in my direction as if this development is somehow my fault.

"The fuck should I know," I say. "The main guys who control the import/export shit in this part of the country are the Turks, but I don't think that they'd be the ones supplying Marluxia and the renegades."

"Why? I can't imagine a group like that having moral qualms against wholesaling drugs to high school students," Naminé says.

My breath catches in my throat as I realize that I haven't told either of them about the Organization and the Turks. Should I tell them; do they even really need to know?

"Marluxia's clique doesn't seem that big. Why would the Turks bother with minnows?"

Naminé shrugs but doesn't argue, satisfied with my logic. I think, for the moment at least, this is one secret that's better left kept to myself.

"Bro, at this point, what's it matter where Marluxia got his stuff from," Sora says. "We're still not any closer to figuring out what we're going to do with the yam."

I bury my head in my hands. Baby brother's right; we're on the fast track to nowhere with this and if we don't make some kind of decision soon I know Sora will just say '_fuck it'_ and flush the heroin down the drain. Think…there's got to be some way that I can use this thing to my advantage.

"Anybody got any suggestions," I ask.

"You already know what I want to do," Sora replies, crossing his arms and scowling.

"And I already told you why that's a dumb idea."

"Fuck off Roxas, I don't have to…"

"HEY!"

The table rattles violently as Naminé smashes the top with her fist. My confrontation with Sora is cut off before it can really get going.

"Have either of you considered just selling the damn thing," she asks.

"…What," my brother and I say at the same time.

"I'm not sure I heard you correctly," I say. "You think we should _sell_ the yam?"

"First, both of you, stop looking at me like that; and yeah why not?"

She turns her attention to me.

"Roxas, I'm not sure how this turned into some huge organized crime/conspiracy thing, but the reason you started down this road in the first place was because you wanted to find out what happened to Pence, remember?"

"Of course," I mumble, though truth be told, I have been getting caught up in the madness surrounding this...I guess you could call it a case?

"Somebody out there knows something. So take the yam to the streets, flip it and you use the cash to loosen a few tongues. Buying info has got to be easier than begging or beating it out of people."

I've gotta admit, the girl has a good argument. Nothing cracks a clam quicker than a little monetary compensation. But do I really want to go down that road? I mean, that's kind of a stupid question to ask myself after that thing with Demyx but…besides, like I said before, word gets around. If Sora or I move the yam, I'm certain we'll catch the attention of all the wrong kinds of people.

I look towards Sora. He looks about as uncomfortable as I feel with this suggestion.

"Let's not go there just yet," I say to Naminé.

She gives a small roll of her shoulders and leans back in her seat. "Well, that's the best idea I've got."

"Regardless of what you want to do, that _thing's_ not staying another night in here," Sora says firmly.

I want to punch a hole in one of these walls. The opportunity that the yam gave us is about to slip away. After going to all that trouble to get the fucking thing in the first place, my brother wants to flush the drugs down the toilet. Worst of all, I can't think of a good enough reason to stop him. If only there were somebody who…wait a minute.

I reach into my pocket and grab my phone.

"Who're you calling," Naminé asks.

"I'm about to try something. If this guy's not interested in what I have to say, then we might as well toss the yam in the sewer."

I hit Saix's number and have to wait a few tones before his gruff voice rumbles over the phone.

"What is it?"

"I got something I want to show you," I reply.

* * *

><p>I've never really been partial to libraries. Its not like I'm one of those guys that hates reading anything that's not in a speech bubble or on a sports page, though. I think it has more to do with the fact that coming to the T-Town's main library branch always reminded me of how poor this city- and, by extension, me and mom- were. Located on a bombed out block in an already rough downtown, the City Library wasn't a place that too many people frequented. In fact, besides the librarians and the homeless guys sitting around reading the periodicals downstairs, I think I'm the only patron.<p>

When I got here, I camped out at a table on the top floor, next to a window; I've got a pretty good view of the city. Across the way, some enterprising graffiti artist has painted an impressive tag on an old billboard atop the adjoining building.

'_O.X. BALLZ WUZ HERE!'_

Heh.

Heavy footfalls on the hardwood floors alerts me to his approach. I turn my head away from the window and, right on time, Saix makes his entrance. He looks almost as annoyed to be here as I am.

He jerks a chair out from the table and sets himself down across from me.

"You've got ten minutes," he growls.

'_Fuck you too, pal.' _

I hold my tongue and reach into my pocket, pulling out a dope-shot I wrapped in plastic, and slide it across to Saix. I watch as his eyes narrow and he directs his cold glare at me.

"Where did you get that?"

"I got it from Marluxia," I say. I watch as genuine surprise, an emotion I've rarely ever seen on Saix's, floods over his face.

"And before you ask, yeah, there is a lot more where that came from."

Saix leans back and places a hand over his mouth. I can tell that he's already in the middle of plotting something.

"Now, I wonder; how does Marluxia have enough juice to get this sort of work? I mean, he's always been the enterprising type, but…"

We lean in towards each other. He drops his voice from its usual gravel-choked rumble to a barely audible whisper.

"How did you get this stuff," Saix asks tersely.

"By risking my ass," I answer, angrily lying through my teeth.

"Marluxia's got a whole operation ready to roll, and believe me when I tell you those boys are ready to start taxing."

"Don't blow smoke up my ass Roxas."

"Saix, look at me," I say, putting on the most serious face that I can conjur. "Do I look like I'm playing around with you?"

He gives me a hard glare, trying to divine any sort of untruthfulness in my demeanor. Saix's look of suspicion soon melts into an expression of worry; my poker face is as strong as ever.

"Shit," he mutters, leaning back into his seat.

"Okay Roxas, here's what you're going to do. You're…"

"Whoa, whoa, I'm going to stop you right there," I say, cutting him off.

"Seems to me that I'm the one that's ducking all the shots and taking all the risks in this thing; I think I've earned a repartee with the Superior."

Saix clearly doesn't like this idea.

"You don't come within a hundred feet of him. This right here, stays between _you_ and _me_," the threat is implicit in his voice.

Frankly, I don't really care. I've been on such a serious mindfuck for the past couple of weeks that Saix _can't_ threaten me. He hasn't got the leverage; I have information that he wants but I'm not going to give it to him on anything except my terms. I push myself away from the table and stand up. I indulge in the rare pleasure of looking down my nose at the hulking Nobody.

"Look man, you're coming up on a problem- a big problem- and I'm the only one who knows how big. You can either use me to take care of it for you, or you can keep being an asshole. Get me my sit-down with Xemnas."

I turn around and walk away. I'm about halfway to the stairs before I hear a begrudging "wait" is thrown at my back. Saix hoists his imposing frame out of his chair. He makes like he's about to say something, thinks better of it and then gives me this angry look.

"I'll get with you later," he says.

"Good."

I'm actually sure if that is a good thing, but I'll definitely hope for the best.


End file.
